


Spark

by Rastaban



Series: Unmapped Worlds [2]
Category: Magic: The Gathering
Genre: Backstory, Gen, Growing Up Izzet, Is Not A Toy, Izzet League, Minority Religion, Okay Niv-Mizzet Is There Too, Origin Story, Ravnica, Science Is Hard, Selesnyan Conclave, The Life Academic, When In Doubt Set Something On Fire, storm magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-15
Updated: 2016-03-19
Packaged: 2018-05-20 07:54:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 68,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5997763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rastaban/pseuds/Rastaban
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Do you know how I became part of the Izzet, Beleren? Do you know what I went through to find a place where I belonged? I grew up in a tiny district. Small district full of small people. Did they encourage my storm magic? No. Everybody picked on the 'rain mage.' "</p><p>Natalka and Alexei Zarek don't understand where they went wrong with their oldest boy. Ral Zarek doesn't understand why nothing he ever does is right, why what seems obvious to him is such a mystery to others, why the magic that comes so easily to him frightens everyone else away. Why he sees impossible places in his dreams. </p><p>He doesn't understand what's wrong with him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Rain Mage

_"Always there are legends and stories of the powers wielded by certain mages during the Pact Wars, in particular the elementalists. These distant heroes - or villains, depending on the tale-teller - roused whole forests to battle, brought the burning rock from beneath the earth, pulled the very lightning from the sky. Most today say these are only tales of the Guilds to lend themselves power, for we know of no such magic today, and why would such gifts disappear from our populace? This is said with the air of a closing argument; I say that it is the key question, and it has a simple answer. It is because of the Guild-Pact. We conceive of the Pact as a check on the great powers of Ravnnika, and indeed it is; but we must consider not only the intent but also the true nature of this wide-ranging enchantment. The Pact warps chance to ensure that no Guild will dominate the others. It is a work meant to maintain the status quo, and therefore according to its very own rules it must curtail the exceptional, the disruptive, the truly revolutionary, whether it comes in the form of ideas or persons. The enforcement of its directives requires the taming of powers so strong as to let one mage alter the course of an entire war. Of course it is difficult to prove such a supposition, but the theory is sound. Should a day come when the Pact is weakened, or even broken, Ravnnika might find itself in a great deal of turmoil indeed - not only from the warring Guilds, but from the forces of change that the Pact has resisted."_

\-- Feodora Nitar, _The Guild-Pact Considered: Essays on the Occasion of the Bimillennial_

 

 

 

"Yes, but what does that _mean?"_

Instructor Agacio sighed in pointed patience. "The divine mysteries of Tanit are exactly that, child. _Mysteries_. Meant for contemplation by the mortal mind."

"I _am_ contemplating them." The boy frowned, and the shreds of mist he had conjured swirled around him. "That's why I want to know what they mean."

"You will understand as you grow," Agacio assured him.

"I want to understand _now_."

Agacio clicked his tongue in mock admiration. "Yes, and why not? The secrets of the Mother of Rains are entirely fit for a boy of eight." His pupil's mouth set in a defiant frown, and he continued in a gentler tone. "You are blessed by Tanit, and her mysteries shall be opened to you. _In due time,_ " he added, a touch more exasperated than perhaps a temple instructor should be. Under the circumstances, he thought, Tanit would likely forgive him.

"But I don't--"

"It's time for you to return home," said Agacio. "You are far past the end of your lessons."

"But I--"

"There are others who require my tutelage today," chastised the instructor. "Are your questions more important than theirs?"

It was on the tip of the boy's tongue to retort _yes_ , Agacio could tell; his dark eyes narrowed, and for a moment the wisps of cloud thickened and grew heavy. But perhaps he was learning after all, because he swallowed the words and said, "Thank you, Instructor Agacio."

"Practice your mists," said Agacio, standing. "Blessings flow upon you." The boy mumbled something that could have been _blessings flow upon you_ , snatched up the leather satchel that never left his side, and darted from the room before Agacio had finished shaking out his long blue robes.

The instructor heaved in a deep breath and stretched, lifting his hands to the sky. The short stool he had remembered to bring today had been far more comfortable than the hard tile of the practice room, but it still hadn't been enough. Once again he'd ended up nearly half an hour past time answering the child's questions, and once again all his attempts at being a proper tutor had only earned him a kink in his back.

Agacio closed his eyes, let out his breath, centered himself around the wellspring of energy flowing up from his core. Tangled wisps of mana flickered in the air of the practice room where his errant pupil had forgotten them. "Tanit of the sky, from whom all blessings flow," he began in a low murmur. He chanted the ritual words with the ease of long practice, their familiar rhythm guiding his hands as he gathered up the scraps of energy. The scent of water and earth bloomed around him. Mist condensed into droplets and drizzled down across calm mosaic faces, Tanit of the Rains, Tanit of the Open Waters, Tanit of the Gentle Sun.

When he murmured the last syllable of the psalm the strands of mana melded, joined, pooled at last in his cupped palms. Agacio carried the liquid light to the granite statue at the far end of the training room and poured it carefully over the goddess' serene visage. His inner eye watched it mingle with the water that sprang ceaseless from Tanit's stone head and fell from her outstretched hands.

"Lady of the Clouds, give me patience," he murmured to his goddess as the mana slipped through his fingers. His back twinged and his pious expression flickered. "Better yet, give it to the Zarek boy."

 

* * *

 

Thunder rumbled overhead.

"Ral? Is that you?"

His father's voice echoed from the kitchen as he closed the door, trying to time it to the grumbling sky. Krokt. Not quiet enough. Now his father knew he was home, and he wouldn't be able to escape upstairs for another hour at least.

Instead Ral Zarek went the few steps down the short hallway that took him to the kitchen door. He tapped, unconsciously, at the little framed psalm mounted inside the doorway. "It's me."

His father looked up from the onion he was dicing. "Late again," he said.

"Temple lessons went long."

"You mean you kept Instructor Agacio long," said his father. Ral didn't bother to answer, only pulled a chair out from the table that took up one end of the narrow kitchen. His leather satchel went on his lap and he held it with both hands. His baby brother Jaromir looked up from the wooden rattle he was shoving around the tray of his high-chair long enough to burble nonsensically at him. The little bronze icon of Tanit that occupied the ledge above the sink watched him with blank, gentle eyes.

His father slid the cubes of chopped onion from his knife and said, "Ral, you need to listen to your tutor. Instructor Agacio is one of the finest rain mages in the Eighth District Temple. You could learn so much from him."

"He doesn't want to teach me," said Ral.

"Nonsense. You're a smart boy, and a gifted one. You'll be an Instructor yourself one day. Even Mother Sonja says so."

"Then why won't he tell me anything _useful?"_

"Instructor Agacio is a wise and holy man, and he is giving you the gift of his knowledge," said his father, firmer this time. "If you understood more than him, you would be the teacher."

"He doesn't know anything! He just says things that sound important!"

"Ral!" scolded his father. "Don't speak that way about your elders."

Something bright and hot went _crack_ inside Ral's chest. "Everyone tells me to listen to him!" he yelled. "Why doesn't anyone ever listen to _me!?"_

The knife went still on the cutting block. Jaromir started to cry. "Go upstairs," said his father in an even tone. "Your mother and I will discuss your lessons when she comes home."

"Fine," spat Ral. He stomped up the stairs, hoping his father could hear it, and slammed the door to his own room as loudly as he could.

Ral's room was just about long enough for him to walk all the way around his bed, and just about wide enough to accommodate the shelves that held his clothes. Well, were intended to hold his clothes. Mostly the floor held his clothes and the shelves held much more interesting things: shining rocks, misshapen insects, lengths of wire and strange glass, flowers that had managed to find purchase between the Eighth District's endless cobblestones.

He upended his battered little satchel over a clear patch on the top shelf and let the twist of copper fall out. At least he had gotten that right today. If he hadn't had the copper to ground him instead of something less important, something less calming, he would have certainly snapped at Instructor Agacio rather than his father, and then he would be in much more trouble than a late supper. A small package wrapped in faded cloth went in its place. He snapped the leather satchel shut and shouldered it again, this time buckling the crisscrossing straps to hold it in place.

His room was small, the ceiling was low, and a stovepipe somewhere vented a little too close to the floorboards and made everything he owned smell of coal. But he wouldn't have traded it for any other room in this building, because it had a window. One glorious, beckoning square of escape. The window looked out onto an alley, of course, and onto the solid brick wall of the next townhouse in the row, close enough to touch with his outstretched fingers. But the drainpipe went by it, and he could get up and over and onto the narrow arch that braced this building against its neighbors, and from there it was a simple climb towards the distant roof, if one were careful not to look down. By now Ral hardly even needed to look at the stone in front of him. It never bothered him, anyway, the drop. He wasn't going to fall. Why worry?

Some two stories up he paused to catch his breath and sat for a moment with his back against the brick, listening. Back below him, through the kitchen window, he could hear the slice of his father's knife through the rest of the onion. On the floor across from him dishes clattered and smoke wafted from an open vent, smelling of noodles and soft cheese. In the scattered boxes beneath their windowsills the stems of horseradish and dill stretched desperately upwards in search of the sun. Jaromir was still crying; young children were screaming, or maybe laughing; steam hissed in one of the stout metal pipes that ran up alongside his perch. The clouds growled overhead and Ral's heart surged at the sight of the sky. He resumed his climb, more quickly now, making straight for the roof without pause.

When Ral Zarek reached the roof and broke out at last into the clear sky, he stood a full ten stories above what passed for the ground on Ravnica, and his first breath of open air felt like tearing away a band that had been cinched tight around his chest. The sky above him opened up into glorious chaos. He had been watching it all day, waiting, hoping, and he had gotten his wish. Long lines of heaped clouds plumed up high and straight as the columns on an Azorius consulate, flaring out at the top, looking like they would tumble over in the next moment. Clear white had given way to a thousand shades of grey smeared aloft by the wind. The back of his neck prickled; a cold gust raised goosebumps on his arms.

Anger curdled his stomach, blurred his thoughts; formless, furious, impotent rage, and here in this sanctuary he gave in to it at last. It surged up through his veins, fiery and bright. He clenched his fists hard enough that his nails bit into his palms, all that energy focused into shuddering muscles, into a soundless snarl of defiance.

How _dare_ they!? How dare any of them treat him like this - like a fool, like a burden, like a problem to be solved - when he was--! He was...

His lungs burned and he heaved in a long breath. The fire burnt itself out, leaving behind only shivering ash in the ache of his muscles. He thumped down, suddenly exhausted, onto the faded tarpaper of the roof; then after a moment pulled in his legs and sat tailor-fashion, following the new thought that had flared in his mind.

Most of what Instructor Agacio told him was obviously useless, but he had found a few facts of interest hidden among the cryptic talk of divinities. Ral considered the hymn that had been the subject of this afternoon's abortive lesson. It had bored him to tears even as it frustrated him, but even so some small fraction of it had piqued his interest, and he had learned to trust that intuition. It had led him to gold hidden in the temple's ambiguous muck before, and it might again.

The Instructor had begun his "education" with a series of breathing and meditation exercises, and Ral had discovered that with some modifications - mostly excising the prayers he was meant to be focusing on - they were eminently suitable for clearing his mind. He applied one of them now, breathing in and drawing mana at the same time, tracing the flow of light in through his lungs and out through his blood, branching and branching again into every cell of himself. Smoking rage still churned in him but he wrapped it up and set it aside for now, swallowed that heat back down into his core. Focused on his target.

The hymn itself was little more than a list of silly names for the goddess. The overwrought adjectives had already slipped his mind. But as he quietly recounted the melody he saw again the pattern that had captured his interest. There _was_ something there in the rhythm, in the harmonic tones. He mulled it over, but nothing came to him. Yet now that he knew there was an answer, he knew too that he would figure it out eventually. He could wait.

Instead he opened his eyes and unbuckled the satchel, drawing out the parcel and folding back the cloth to reveal a small pair of binoculars. The "brass" on the barrel was already peeling, despite the fact that he'd only been given them a few months ago, and he had already had to reseat one of the large lenses at the end. But they were _his,_ no one else's, and that was all that mattered.

He stood up on the flat roof, ignoring the gusty winds that plucked at his clothing, and raised the binoculars to his eyes. The distant horizon sprang into focus, and all the stretch between him and it, the jostling field of steeples and arches and bridges and buildings. The unfinished dome of an Orzhov cathedral rose about a mile to his west. He zoomed in on it. The workers had abandoned the site at the storm's approach, and huge, dingy cloths flapped loose from their anchors and billowed high above the skeleton of steel, the half-completed brickwork they were meant to protect. Steam and smoke and stranger things floated up into the sky. The city hummed around him, ragged, beautiful, eternal Ravnica.

Another ripple of low thunder ran through the clouds and the hymn jumped unexpectedly to the forefront of Ral's mind. He lowered the binoculars, frowning, repeating its measured chant in his mind. Without any conscious decision he began to shape mana to the pattern that rang beneath the empty words. Such a simple thing, he saw it now, and yet it repeated through so many variations, interacting with itself, building up--

The sky _cracked_ above him sharp as a whip, tearing through his concentration, and the wisps of mana snarled. He grabbed after them, scrambling to pull the spell back together, but they dissipated into the aether. He let them go with a twisted frown, but the disgruntled expression did not sit long on his face. He couldn't stay upset. Not under a sky like this. Anything so human washed away in the elemental brilliance of the storm that rose above him, that broke over Ravnica as it had since the world had been nothing but open fields.

"Since the Temple of Tanit actually _meant_ anything," he said aloud, confident that the wind would steal away his words. He had learned quickly enough not to say such things where adults could hear. But up here it was only him and the sky and the storm, and he could say whatever he wanted to. A few cold drops tapped him on the shoulders. Damn. Rain, just a scattering, but wet clothes would surely give him away. He'd have to go back down. Unless--

He closed his eyes and drew thin coils from the light that burned in his mind, in his heart. A faint blue dome spiraled out from him and shunted the falling rain aside till he stood beneath a bowl of clear air. Ral opened his eyes and breathed out, setting the final seal on the spell, then caught himself in an unexpected grin. Pride glowed warm in his chest. Agacio hadn't taught him that one; he'd figured it out from watching the older mages at their exercises, and it appeared - the dome held steady now even without his attention - that he had gotten it right.

He raised the binoculars again and swept them this time across the sky, mapping the million different variations in the seething clouds. Here was one that looked like cotton shredded to rags; here was another sleek and dark as oil poured onto glass, slipped between two massive thunderheads like the assassin's knife; this one here was caught in some rising wind, pulled out into strange spirals.

Something _snapped_ up above, sharper and more focused than the thunder, and Ral tracked across the belly of the storm till he spotted the glow. A flaring silhouette burnt through the clouds, sinking down, tearing through the mist. Surprised excitement sparked in his stomach and fizzed along his limbs. He knew that fire. Only one beast cast it.

The dragon was coming.

Drakes and their larger cousins sometimes dared the skies above the eighth, coasting on the high and rising thermals. But _the dragon_ was something else altogether. Wide-winged, blazing red, it glided far above the stain of the streets. Its bulk wouldn't fit within the binoculars' field of view and parts of it appeared and disappeared as it moved: the long tail, the powerful talons, the broad and flaring crest and finely scaled head. Sunlight would have scattered away from those scales in shards of ruby and sapphire, but beneath the darkness of the storm it glowed within its own nimbus of golden fire.

Ral tracked it across the sky, already certain of its destination. The dragon came from many directions, but when it flew towards Ravnica's center it always made for the same place: a high tower that just pierced the horizon, a structure his binoculars told him stood a shade too tall to be built of stone and metal alone. Some magic must float it up there. That seemed right, for a dragon's home.

He lowered the binoculars and watched the fiery shape soar overhead. His mother told him that the dragon's name was Niv-Mizzet, that he was fifteen thousand years old and lived in the Tenth District and ruled a whole Guild - the _whole_ _Guild_ , not just a hall or a district. She said she'd even seen him once - though not up close - on one of the special days when the Conclave called her in to the Temple Garden. Just the idea of that amazed him, even if his mother hadn't sounded so happy when she talked about it.

Niv-Mizzet's distant form jolted upwards, the wide wings flaring up and back, catching a draft - and light lanced down from the clouds above, a brilliant spear of lightning that splashed across his back, blazed from wingtip to wingtip, lit his crest with electric fire. The dragon reared his head, parted his immense jaws, let loose a roar that drowned in the thunder long before it reached Ral; but he knew the sound anyway, could sing it out himself, the blistering light of joy, of _freedom--_

The view ahead of Ral shivered and all his glory flashed to ice. No. Oh, no. Not today, not when he was already in trouble; he couldn't - but the air before him wavered heedless of his pleas, pulsed and thinning, and through it

_another city, another sky, this one pierced by delicate spiraling towers, filigree structures half building and half art, attended by swarms of flying--_

He staggered back, nearly dropping the binoculars, clutching at his head. Pain burst through it like the thunder above. He dropped to his knees in the grime of the rooftop, squeezing his eyes shut, but the vision remained. The brick beneath him wanted to sway, to grow transparent. He ground the heels of his hands into his eyes and black colors burst behind his eyelids, blotting his sight--

and then the pain was gone, and the vision, and the sense that anything strange at all had hung for an instant in the air before him. Ral blinked, letting his sight clear. Far ahead and beyond the golden flame that was Niv-Mizzet sunk into the grey clouds, and was gone.

A sonorous _bong_ rang out across the rooftops as the Orzhov cathedral began to chime the hours. Ral counted: nineteen. His rain spell had scattered like the windblown clouds and he shivered in the damp chill. How long had he been up here? _Too long_ , Ral silently answered his own question. _Mother will be home soon, if she isn't already._ He'd better be back in his room by then, dry and presenting a convincing image of confined suffering. He stood carefully and inspected his clothing for any obvious damage that would earn him a reprimand. The binoculars had a long scratch down the side of one barrel now and he was going to have to fix the lens again. He smiled at them anyway as he packed them back in his satchel, buckled it closed for the climb down. Really, how could he be upset? It was a stormy day and he had seen the dragon. Everything else came second.

 

* * *

 

Rain drummed against the windowpanes and ran through cracks in the brickwork. The sound echoed down the stovepipe into the kitchen, filling the silence between his parents' words. Ral kept his head down, staring at the plate in front of him.

"When do you have to go out?" his mother asked his father.

"Not till twenty-two at least," his father answered. "We can't shut down the water main before then, and there's no point in starting until it's dry."

Ral didn't have to look up to know that his mother was frowning, creasing the lines worn into the corners of her eyes. "I wish you didn't have to stay out so late."

"It's not Golgari territory."

"Anywhere underground is Golgari territory."

"It'll be all right. The League is sending someone."

His mother scoffed. "You mean the League is paying some Boros washout to stand in the tunnel with a blunted blade."

"It will be _all right,_ Natalka. That's not my concern at the moment." A rustle of cloth told him his father had shifted his gaze. Ral kept his eyes fixed resolutely on the wood in front of him. On the other side of the table Jaromir banged his little spoon against his chair.

"Ral, darling," said his mother softly. "The Temple Instructors said you had a difficult day today."

Ral didn't say anything, fighting to keep his expression blank. The rain beat out an irregular tattoo on the metal of the pipes. He counted the drops.

"He believes he has nothing left to learn from them," said his father.

 _That_ was wrong enough to sting him into action. "I never said that!"

"What did you mean, then?" asked his mother calmly.

"Just...that they won't tell me anything. Instructor Agacio just wants me to nod and say the prayers and maybe try a Breath discipline. I'm ready for Crown, I can do it. I can do _so much more_."

"Of course you can," said his mother. "You're going to be a very powerful mage one day, like your uncle Laslò and cousin Julia. You'll have a home of your own that takes up a whole building, and all the Guilds will compete for your services. But even the Honored Mages were students once."

"I bet you didn't have to deal with a stupid Instructor," muttered Ral.

"I had many tutors, and some of them were not nearly so nice as Agacio," said his mother. She ruffled his hair and he tried to scowl. "My dear little thundercloud, one day you will know so much."

 _I want to know_ now _,_ he fumed.


	2. Tenth

"Where does Tanit live?"

Instructor Agacio took a deep breath and counted to three before he let it out. "Tanit lives within us all, and within the water, and the sky."

"But only our sky?"

"What other sky is there?"

"Lots more. I've seen them. There's a sky with monsters in it all frozen into rock and they look like--" The Zarek boy made an odd snarling gesture, crooking his fingers like claws. "There's a sky with two moons and there's one with five suns and it's never really night. There's--"

"All right, all right," said Agacio indulgently. This was what came of letting children read novels. "Then where are they?"

"They're--" Zarek frowned and then, to Agacio's private amazement, shaded his eyes and stared through his instructor.

"They're here," the boy said finally, sounding frustrated. "They're here, but they're not. They're a place where - 'where' doesn't mean anything."

"You shouldn't make things up. It's very rude to lie to an adult."

"I'm not lying!"

"Oh? Then where are these other skies of yours?"

"I just told you! They're _here_. But they're...they're not."

"Because they aren't real," said Agacio as gently as he could.

"They're more real than Tanit is!"

"Student Zarek!" barked Agacio, standing up. "You will not speak thus in a house of worship!"

Zarek's expression contorted and the rage that blazed in his eyes froze Agacio's blood. For a moment the Instructor had the sense of a great attention fixed on him, an elemental fury - and then it folded inwards, and the boy took a deep breath, and held his tongue. The inhuman anger vanished beneath an expression of laborious restraint. Volume, it seemed, had gotten through where nothing else would.

"You shall apologize, and ask the goddess' forgiveness," ordered Agacio. He silently reminded himself to breathe.

Zarek mumbled something that might have been the appropriate words. Well, he would take what he could get. He reseated himself on the stool, waiting for his pupil to do the same.

"A mage cannot give in to his own imagination, Ral," he began in a calmer tone, once the boy had sat. "You must see what is and what is not. The powers you wield will seek to overwhelm you, and if you cannot hold on to reality, you will be lost."

Agacio paused. After a few moments Zarek seemed to realize that some response was expected on him, and muttered, "Yes, Instructor Agacio."

"Now. Let us finish the twenty-fifth psalm of Breath, and we'll have no more talk of imaginary suns. Yes?"

"Yes, Instructor Agacio."

They chanted the psalm together, over and over, and for once his pupil did as he was asked; but he spoke little and would not meet his instructor's gaze, and Agacio couldn't shake the uneasiness that had settled over him, the buried seed of fear.

 

* * *

 

The Temple vests were made of fine green and blue cloth worked through with holy sigils in silver thread. They held pride of place in his parents' closet next to his father's good suit, his mother's mage robes, and the four brightly-colored prayer shawls Great-Aunt Hana had made for feast days. His mother always tucked a lavender sachet into the inside pocket before she hung each one up, to ensure they would not pick up the coal-steam-onion scent that pervaded everything else in the building.

Ral would have quite happily set his on fire.

"But _why_ do I have to come with?"

His mother didn't look away from her reflection as she affixed the second hairpin. "You are coming with us, and that's final."

"You could let me stay home," he tried. "I could go stay with Auntie Danika. It could be an early birthday present."

"Your birthday is not for another three weeks, young man, and I'm not sending you off to roughhouse with Stefan and Timofey." She slid a third pin beneath her elaborate crown of braids and turned side to side, checking to see if it would stay.

"Jaro gets to stay home."

"Jaromir is going to stay with Papa Yuli and Papa Lazlo, and why are you being so stubborn about this? Any other day, if I told you you could go to the Tenth I'd get no peace until we went."

"I don't want to go to that part of the Tenth. Why can't we go to Grandmother Marzanna's house?" His mother's hand paused in the middle of reaching for another pin. Ral seized the opening. "We haven't been there in forever, she'd be really happy. You could drop me off at her house. And then you and Dad could go do your Guild stuff without me around. And--"

"We are not going to my mother's house." Ral's mouth snapped shut of its own accord at the unexpected harshness in her voice. She sighed and said, "I'm sorry, my dear, I didn't mean to yell. But the Tenth...isn't very safe. Your father and I would never forgive ourselves if we let something happen to you." She paused to press down the hair swept above her ear and angle the pin beneath it. "And there will be plenty for you to do at the Guildhall, and lots of children your age to play with. If you're bored, that will be your own fault."

"I don't _want_ to play with them. They're boring."

"That's because you never give them a chance." His mother opened one of the delicate little jars on the dresser before her and began to apply the familiar makeup, what Ral thought of as her Temple face: the teal eye-shadow, the green tears running down her cheeks, the white lip paint. "If you wouldn't frighten them away, you would like them very much."

"If they get frightened away they're not worth being friends with anyway."

His mother pressed her lips together, smoothing the white paint, and examined her reflection again. Whatever she saw didn't seem to raise her spirits. She set the makeup jars down and turned to him. "You must learn to behave yourself in company, my dear," she said, and forestalled his next outburst with an open palm. "No, you don't have to like it. But sometimes we all have to do things we don't like, for the sake of others. One day, Tanit willing, you and your brother will be able to claim allegiance to the Conclave. You won't have to be Guildless, or your family. Don't you want your children to have a better life?"

Ral made a disgusted face. "I'm never having kids."

"You'll change your mind."

"I won't."

His mother only chuckled indulgently. Ral's cheeks burned and he clenched his jaw tight. "For now, we have to show that we're worthy of joining the Conclave," she continued. "The Selesnya value cooperation, and that means you have to learn to get along with others. You can't always be telling them they're wrong."

"But they _are!"_

"That's for your elders to decide, not you. Mat'Selesnya's voice is heard in harmony. You'll understand."

"If being in a Guild is so great, then why aren't we in one already?"

"Well, when my grandmother grew up, it was easier to be Guildless."

"Why?"

"Because we still had the Guildpact."

"Then why did we get rid of it?"

She turned back to the mirror, and he knew the argument was over. "I'm not discussing it, Ral. Put your vest on. We're going in half an hour."

 

* * *

 

His mother caught him trying to sneak his leather satchel along for the ride, but Ral had already yanked the floral sachet out of the vest's hidden inner pocket and put the piece of copper in there instead, and a piece of blue glass, and a piece of interesting black stone that had little white flecks caught within it like suspended snow. Beneath the cloth they lay just over his heart and he could smell the warm metal, sour and familiar and real. It grounded him all through the lurching carriage-ride towards the center of Ravnica. He had been a little excited despite himself when he saw that they would be taking a real hansom-cab there, like an Orzhov, but it took only a few minutes for the bounce of the carriage combined with the clinging, cloying scent of lavender to make him desperately ill. So he spent most of the trip slumped in the padded seat with his eyes closed, trying to convince his stomach that they were doing nothing out of the ordinary.

When it rattled to a stop and he heard the door open, he sat up and looked out into another world.

The sight made him forget all his discomfort. The Tenth District. Heart of the world-city. Before them rose a gate of white marble centered around a huge tree that spread, branching and branching again, curving its limbs to twine through the gate's thousand arches - or perhaps the tree had grown there and the arches built around it, all the blocks of stone hanging from its limbs. He barely noticed the step down out of the carriage, his eyes fixed on the massive structure. At the center of the gate, where the tree trunk forked, a massive face had been carved into the stone: blank, smooth, stern, crowned in spreading gold that formed the Selesnyan crest.

He turned, scanning the horizon. Far up above he could make out the slender pointed vault of the Transguild Promenade - right here, in person, not painted in cheap, lurid color on the back of a book. The sunlight flashed painfully bright from a spill of golden domes atop a massive structure that drifted like a cloud above the rooftops; he shaded his eyes and squinted at it, trying to make out a Guild crest.

"Parhelion, where the angels live," said his father as he descended from the carriage behind him, following his son's gaze. "As far as they can get from the actual city."

Boros, then; Boros was boring. Ral shifted his gaze, trying to take it all in. Three immense pillars loomed straight and true in the distance - that was New Prahv, he knew that, everyone knew that - and then his attention caught on a vast, distant tower that shot up into the sky attended by a constellation of smaller structures in stone and metal. A raw and shimmering river of mana orbited the flock of spires as they shifted in slow but constant motion. Arcs of power flickered between outcroppings of brass. It took him a breathless moment just to process the sight, and then another to recognize the high tower he had seen through his binoculars so many times. The dragon's home.

"Come on, my dear," said his mother, putting one hand on his shoulder. She was staring pensively at the Selesnyan Guildgate.

Ral didn't move. Instead he pointed towards the tower. "What's that?"

"Nivix. Come along." This time Ral let himself be pulled. "And before you ask me, it's another Guildhall."

"Why does it float?" he asked as they ascended white stone steps. Emerald moss outlined the straight square joints between blocks.

"Because the Izzet enjoy making things float," said his mother. She didn't sound like she thought floating things were a good idea.

 _"How_ does it float?"

"Magic."

"What kind of magic?"

"Izzet magic. Hush."

The gloom beneath the arches came as a welcome change from the brilliant sun. Before them the immense gate-tree rose stately from a pyramid of roots and soil and stone. His parents stopped and Ral didn't mind, being thoroughly engrossed in the sight of the massive tree. Twenty of him still wouldn't have been able to link arms around its trunk.

 _That is a very large plant,_ he had to admit.

A flicker of steel in the shadows drew his attention away. Two green-clad elven sentinels had swept aside their polearms, holding them now straight and steady at their sides, while a third inspected something in his hand. Ral hadn't even seen them among the leaves and trailing vines that lined the stone, or perhaps supported it. The elves watched him with cold eyes. The third sentinel handed a small wooden carving back to his mother, then stepped aside. Ral felt his mother's hand descend again to his shoulder, clutch it tight through the thick fabric of the vest.

"We're here," she said quietly. "Be good, my dear." They passed through the arch between the silent guards.

An immense space opened up on the other side. Ral tipped his head back and stared. The high-raftered roof soared up nearly as tall as the building he lived in. Branches of wood and white marble laced the ceiling together, letting golden shafts of sunlight fall on the astonishing landscape below: trees and bushes and flowers and grass and vines and-- _This must be what a forest looks like,_ he decided. But the more he looked the more he saw how each plant had been shaped, ordered, arranged so that none of them disturbed another. Even the sunlight shining down seemingly at random lit up areas of particular beauty - a sapling just bursting into bloom, a small waterfall, a pillar of rocks somehow stacked just so. Long arcades formed the walls and greenery spilled over the edges of walkways that led deeper into the Guildhall. At distant intervals more immense tree trunks spiraled up all the way from the ground to the roof. He wondered if they joined together with the tree outside, or if they were all the same tree. Somehow he thought it was the latter.

It left Ral wanting to turn and run. The Guildhall didn't want him here. The place was like a temple, only it was someone else's temple, and it was watching him with a gaze as cold and distant as the sentries'.

A wide, sweeping set of stairs descended to the level of the temple-forest-garden, which made Ral wonder why they had had to go up the stairs outside if they were just going to go back down again. At its base a sunburst of stone paths spread out into the Hall. A small knot of people clothed in various shades of white and green stood at the junction and looked up as they approached.

"Natalka!" said a short blonde woman, stepping forward. She embraced his mother, kissing her on both cheeks as his mother did the same. Ral considered his options for a moment, then jumped off the last step onto the carpet of low, perfect grass. He bent to inspect it. Was it cut, or had each blade simply been grown to the ideal height? He considered taking his shoes off and finding out. Behind and above him buzzed the usual pointless talk adults always exchanged when they saw each other. It sounded strange, though, and he put a hand to one ear for an uneasy second until he figured out what was missing: Ravnica's ubiquitous background hum had vanished. In the Selesnyan Guildhall the only sounds were the rustle of leaves, the drip of water, the quiet murmur of soft speech. They braided together into a calm, tranquil haze woven with just as much care as the tall ceiling. He straightened up. A grove of flowering trees grew a few meters away. It was easily more trees than he'd ever seen before in a single place. Their branches looked a lot like the archways and ledges back home. He could probably get a leg up on the short one there, and then...

"And this must be Ral," said a voice behind him. He braced himself and turned back towards the knot of adults. His mother beckoned him over. She was smiling when she did but the lines at the corners of her eyes had come back. Ral tried to squash down his sullen expression and look properly harmonic as he came to her side. His father was already off speaking to an elf he didn't know, but the rest of the group had stayed near his mother.

"Ral, say hello to Woodshaper Erika," his mother told him, laying her hand on his shoulder and gesturing towards the tall woman who had first greeted them.

"Hello Woodshaper Erika," he repeated on automatic, staring her up and down. Her robes had the Selesnyan crest worked into them at every possible opportunity. Ral wondered why. Was someone worried she might forget which Guild she was in?

"Hello, Ral," said Erika. "I hear you've inherited the family talent."

"The Temple Instructors say he's one of their strongest students," said his mother proudly. Ral stood a little straighter. "My dear, why don't you show the woodshaper one of the spells you've been practicing?"

 _That_ had definitely not been in the bargain, and for a moment Ral was sorely tempted to see what the woodshaper would do if a sudden squall soaked her pretty robes. But he felt his mother's hand on his shoulder and the piece of copper warm and steady over his heart, and he breathed out and let it go.

Instead he pressed his palms together, reaching out. No lack of water in here. By the time he had spread his hands to shoulder-width he had gathered enough mist that it could reasonably be called a cloud.

"That's wonderful!" said Erika. "You'll be managing a sky-farm in no time."

The cloud puffed and tried to plume upwards. Ral twitched the boundaries of the spell, pulling it back down.

"Woodshaper? Mage Zarek?" said one of the other adults. Erika and his mother both turned away from him. "The morning council will convene momentarily."

"Of course," said his mother. "Ral, put that away."

Ral grasped the edges of the spell and began to banish it. But the cloud bobbled anxiously between his hands and he paused. It wanted to be big, he could tell. It wanted to fly up and grow fat with rain and rain on everything. _I am a little cloud now,_ it said. _But I could be so much more._

Before he could think any further he turned his palms upwards and released the spell's tethers. The cloud shot upwards high into the sunlit haze of the Hall. He watched it go and wondered what would happen to it. He didn't like the Selesnyan Guildhall much, but It seemed like a pretty good place to be a cloud.

"Ral," repeated a familiar voice. "Ral, darling, can you hear me?"

"Hm?" he said.

"Ral, I do wish you'd listen to me when you're casting," said his mother, sounding exasperated. "Alexei, why don't you..." she began, looking around for his father, but he had disappeared. "Oh dear. They must have started already."

"There are gatherers out by the Ivory Oaks," offered Erika. "I can drop Ral off there and be right behind you."

"Thank you," said his mother gratefully. "Ral, I have to tend to Guild business now. Go with the woodshaper." A hand pressed flat against his back completed the order.

"Come with me, then," said Erika. She held out a hand. Ral looked at it, and after a moment she turned the aborted gesture into a graceful flourish. "You'll like the Ivory Oaks."

"Are those the big trees?" he asked as they set off down one of the sunburst paths, this one leading across the width of the hall.

"The Oaks?" Erika seemed amused by the idea and a hot flare of annoyance ran through him. "Well, they are larger than most of their kind."

"No, the ones like _that,"_ he snapped, jabbing a finger at the sight of one of the distant roof-trees.

"Aha," said Erika in new understanding. "No, the Ivory Oaks are a sacred grove. They were planted--"

"Do those trees hold the building up?"

"The..." Erika faltered, momentarily baffled at the interruption.

"Or does the building hold the trees up?"

"It's... Ah, it's what we call a _symbiosis_. That means--"

"When two things work together, I know, I'm not _stupid."_

"You are a quick one, aren't you," said Erika.

"Yes. Are the trees in symbiosis with the building?"

"In a manner of speaking. Though it may appear to be separate, all parts of the Guildhall are one. The City-Tree and the stone walls support each other. Vitu-Ghazi is neither rock nor wood but the fusion of both, the living manifestation of cooperation creating this marvelous space."

Vitu-Ghazi must be the Guildhall's name, then. Ral filed that away for future reference. It was, he realized sadly, almost certainly going to come up again.

The grass swept up flush against the edge of one of the long arcades that lined the hall. The tiled waves of green and grey along the walls made Ral a little dizzy. Erika stepped onto stone and led him along the arcade.

"Which came first?" he wanted to know. "The tree or the building?"

"Neither. They were grown together."

"When?"

"Thousands of years ago. Your mother was serious about your questions, wasn't she."

"How can a tree be thousands of years old?"

"How can a dragon?" said Erika. "Vitu-Ghazi stood even before the signing of the Guildpact."

"Was it the same size? Does the tree grow?"

"No, and yes. The Hall is bigger now. The Guild is, too, and may it grow ever larger, till all the world hears Mat'Selesnya's voice."

Up ahead Ral saw a splash of the ubiquitous golden sunlight across the stone floor. They came to a tall arch set in the other side of the arcade. Erika led him down the winding path beyond into a broad meadow out in the open air, and at the center of it...well, the Ivory Oaks were indeed fairly large, although after today his size scale for trees would require radical adjustment. They covered the low, sloping hills. Their trunks and branches glowed a pale bone-white beneath a cloud of brilliant green leaves wavering in the faint wind. That lack of sound persisted and Ral found himself searching for the edges of the illusion. Somewhere on the other side of a wall had to be the dirty, chaotic city, but here he could have believed Ravnica didn't exist at all.

The path swept through several pointless switchbacks that Erika patiently walked them both along. It ended in a white marble Selesnyan crest set in the ground at the center of a perfect ring of trees. The Ivory Oaks spread out and above them with no end that Ral could see. A short man was already standing there wearing an expression of decidedly un-Selesnyan agitation as he stared into the wavering shade of the forest and yelled, "Gwyn! Kettrick! Don't think I can't see you! Put it down right now."

"Greetings, Gatherer Karlin," called Erika. The man looked away from his invisible charges and said, "Oh. Greetings, Woodshaper Erika."

"Sounds like you've your hands full."

"It's the Parliament," sighed Karlin. "I've twice my usual number, and half a mind to ask the dryads to wrap them all up till they learn respect." His gaze caught on Ral. "I see you've made a friend."

"Mage Natalka's boy," explained Erika. "She's here for Parliament. Do you mind?"

Gatherer Karlin's already-clouded expression darkened another fraction. "He's not Guild."

"I know, but we've the council, and then another after that, and you know what it's going to be like today."

Gatherer Karlin looked Ral up and down, his mouth twisted with skepticism. "All right. For you, Woodshaper."

"I owe you a debt, Gatherer," said Erika gratefully. "Ral, Gatherer Karlin will look after you until your parents done working. In the meantime, you should listen to him like you listen to your own father."

"I don't listen to my father," said Ral. Erika acted like she hadn't heard him, giving him the same faint shove that had accompanied his mother's order, then started back up the path. Halfway back she turned and gave him a little wave.

Ral walked the few steps over to the gatherer himself, staring at the man. Gatherer Karlin stared right back. "Ral, is it?" he asked, planting his hands on his hips. His left hand clutched a thick book and he still had a thumb marking his page.

"I'm Ral Zarek."

"Well, Ral Zarek, here are the rules in the Oaks. Don't climb the trees, don't annoy the dryads, don't pick the flowers, and don't fight. The Ivory Oaks are a sacred place for the binding of oaths. Try not to sully it with discord." Gatherer Karlin's expression made it clear what he thought the odds were of Ral managing to do that.

"Yes," said Ral, and almost added _Instructor Agacio_ instinctively. That made him picture the Instructor snagging his priestly robes on twigs and bushes as he tried to catch Ral among the trees. _That_ made him want to grin, but he suspected Gatherer Karlin wouldn't appreciate the humor.

"All right," said the gatherer after another appraisal of Ral failed to find whatever lurking danger he suspected. "You're free for now, but no leaving the Oaks. I can find you anywhere in the forest, so remember the rules."

Ral glanced past the man. While the gatherer had been talking to him a ring of curious onlookers had materialized just beyond the closest rank of trees. At least fifteen kids of varying ages were watching. A few of them looked a little older than him, and several of them were larger. Hm.

"Off you go," said the gatherer with a dismissive wave.

Ral bolted into the trees. Without any sort of communication the entire group broke and scattered with him, plunging into the brush. Ral followed without hesitation until at last all the children had gotten out of sight of their minder. Then he moved away. Now they could finally talk.

"Who are you?" demanded one of the taller boys.

"I'm Ral Zarek. Who are you?"

"I'm Gwyn Silverthorn." He jabbed a finger at Ral's vest. "You're one of those Tanish kids. You're not allowed in here."

"I am so."

"No you're not. This is a Guild place. You aren't in our Guild."

Ral squared his shoulders, setting his feet a fraction farther apart. A scrap of bloody glee boiled up in his chest.

"I could join your guild if I wanted to," he said.

"You can't. You're a heretic. You all pray to some stupid rain cloud."

"You pray to a tree," sneered Ral. "That's just as stupid."

Gwyn seemed surprised at his retort, but his face quickly fell into satisfaction. "That's a blasphemy against Mat'Selesnya. You're disrupting the harmony." Even the boy's sidekicks looked shocked at this apparent insult. "You have to _leave."_

Ral only grinned. The piece of copper felt warm over his heart and this was a dance whose steps he knew well. "You don't get to tell me what to do," he declared. "Nobody gets to tell me what to do."

"Leave the Oaks," ordered Gwyn.

Ral's lips curved into a half-snarl. Scraps of cloud bloomed around his clenched fists. "Make me."

He had never thought of Selesnya as a fighting guild, so when Gwyn charged forward Ral stood his ground and waited for a chance to get in the gut punch. But Gwyn sidestepped him and neatly wrapped his arms around Ral's chest, stepping and pivoting and throwing him to the ground hard enough to slam the air from his chest. Ral curled up in shock and pulled on his manabonds. White mist exploded outwards, a blast of damp air catching Gwyn in the chest as he sat up to deliver another blow. He fell backwards and Ral rolled away, wrapping more mist around himself as he moved. Yells and cries of pain echoed through the impenetrable fog as Gwyn and his cronies tried to find him and tripped over the forest's numerous obstacles.

What was it that he wasn't supposed to do? Climb the trees? Good, then they wouldn't look for him there. He found the nearest Oak by stubbing his toe painfully against its trunk, slid his hands along the smooth bark, found branches by touch alone and swung himself up. When he had made it up a few meters, staying close to the center and trusting to the tree's thick green canopy, he risked a moment to look back down.

Thick fog drowned the Oaks for several meters in every direction. A few of the kids had managed to find the edges and stagger out, and they were yelling to their companions. Ral chuckled and sat back against the trunk, letting go of the spell. The mist would fade out on its own, he figured. No reason to help it along. But he got bored after a few minutes of laughing at the idiots staggering around in the forest and dismissed the fog with a flick of his wrist. White wisps scattered apart and melted into thin air. Gwyn and his companions, red-faced and furious, spent a few more minutes yelling his name along with a really creative variety of threats. Ral found the dried meat strips he'd hidden in one pocket this morning and munched on them as he watched.

The Selesnyan kids got bored a lot slower than he would have, but eventually they dispersed. He waited until their voices had faded before climbing back down to ground level. He sat down at the base of the tree's trunk and carefully prodded the areas Gwyn had hit. The tree had given him plenty of scratches on his exposed arms and legs and one of his shoulders was already bruising, but that was all. Not bad for a dozen to one.

"Hi," said a voice behind him.

Ral sat up on his knees. A girl was sitting on one of the artfully-placed fallen logs on the forest floor, looking at him. She wore the same ubiquitous Selesnyan white and green.

"Hi," said Ral.

"I'm Sadie."

"Ral."

"I know."

"Okay."

Sadie seemed to be thinking quite deeply. Then she said, "There's a tree in the Flowering Orchard that grows forty kinds of fruit."

"You're making that up."

"I'll show you."

He followed her through the Oaks. She wound around and between the trees with the ease of someone raised in a forest; Ral had to ask her to wait up more than once. Sadie crossed the boundary of the Oaks without hesitation, but Ral paused.

"Is the gatherer going to catch us?" he asked.

"Gatherer Karlin's off trying to keep Gwyn and Kettrick from climbing a roof-tree," said Sadie. "He won't come looking for us for hours and hours."

She led him through another archway, down an arcade, up a set of stairs and through enough corridors to get him thoroughly lost before they emerged. The reappearance of the distant roof made Ral think that they had looped around and come back to the Hall itself. But they must be in a different part, now, because he didn't recognize the hundreds of trees swaying before him in orderly rows above another smooth grass carpet. Brightly-colored fruit hung from heavy boughs.

"It's in here," said Sadie. She headed unerring towards the center of the orchard where a single enormous tree rose from a low hill. The wide limbs twisting above him bore flowers in a riot of colors, white and purple and pink and blue.

Ral shaded his eyes and wished he had his binoculars. "I don't see any fruit."

"There's some plums near the top," said Sadie. "It's not time for the other ones yet."

"That doesn't count."

"It does too!"

"Anyway, so what if you made a magic tree. Especially if you still have to wait for fruit."

"It is not magic!" declared Sadie. "What they do is, they take a branch off one kind of tree, and they make a cut on the other tree, and then they stick the branch on till they grow together, and then it's like one tree."

"How do you know?"

"Because my mom does it, that's how. I've seen her."

"She made this tree?"

"No. Not yet," amended Sadie. "But I saw her make a tree with three kinds of cherries and one with seven kinds of kvelka and when she becomes a guildcrafter she's going to make the biggest tree ever. Even bigger than this one."

Ral couldn't see how that might be accomplished. Forty kinds of fruit, although he would rather die than admit it to Sadie, was already far more than he'd thought existed. How could there be any left to add on?

"I bet you're lying. I bet there are no plums," he said instead.

"Come on then," said Sadie, pulling herself up into the low fork of the branches. Ral followed after. The tree was far broader than it was tall and even at the very top its thick limbs could support their weight, as long as they sat in different places.

"See?" Sadie pointed triumphantly through the maze of leaves and flowers. Ral leaned forward as far as he could, making his branch sway dangerously. In among the green leaves and white petals he could just make out - yes, the rich purple of ripe plums.

"I told you," said Sadie.

Ral leaned back and asked, "Who made the tree?" Sadie shrugged. "You don't know? Didn't they put their name on it?"

Sadie looked horrified. "You can't do _that_. That would be... _selfish."_ She pronounced the word like _murder_.

"If I made a tree like this, I'd put my name on it."

"It's not important who did it. It's important that it exists. It creates harmony and brings you closer to the Worldmind. And I guess it makes fruit too."

Ral's gaze found the plums again. "Pass me one of them."

"We can't eat them!"

"Then what's the point of having them? I'm hungry. You have to be hungry too."

Sadie's mouth twisted, but she leaned forward from her perch and got a grip on one of the plums. She pulled and the branch bent back alarmingly far before the stem finally gave way. She passed it to Ral and took another for herself. Ral scrubbed the surface of it against the side of his vest and bit in. The rich ripe flavor exploded in his mouth, brighter and fresher here than anything he'd ever found in a market stall.

"Why are you talking to me?" he asked, after he swallowed his first mouthful of plum.

"My mom told me to," said Sadie. "Also I'm sick of Gwyn. Every time we come to Vitu-Ghazi all he wants to do is run away and get up to the Moon-Viewing Ledge. I've been there. It's boring."

"I guess our moms are friends."

"Yeah. I like your mom. One time my flowers were wilting because I made a mistake and my creek dried up but she made it rain so they didn't die."

"You grow flowers?"

"I'm going to be a florist," said Sadie. "I did all of tulips this year, the whole exam, and they even let me plant a bed in the vernadi. The gardeners say I can start on roses next year."

"You're lucky. My instructor doesn't let me do anything."

"Are you a rain mage too?"

"I made a cloud," he said proudly, pointing upwards through the canopy of branches towards the distant chime of mana. And indeed he could just make out his cloud still drifting white and gold in the high space of the Hall. It looked healthy. In fact, it looked a bit bigger.

"Where?" said Sadie, squinting upwards. Ral tried to point to it, but Sadie still looked perplexed. He reached for the trailing tethers of the spell and felt it respond, changing direction, coming closer. The warm sunlight around them dimmed for a fraction of a second. "There!" he declared triumphantly. "It's right there, in front of the sun." He turned to Sadie, but instead of the amazement he expected she looked suddenly worried.

"You have to move it," she said, low and serious.

"What? Why?"

"Because it's not allowed."

Ral looked baffled. "It's a cloud."

"Everything in the Hall is arranged in unity. Even the wind and the light. You can't just put a cloud in. You're disrupting the harmony." He bristled at the same words Gwyn had thrown at him, but Sadie said it like a dire warning.

"Fine." Ral reached up and nudged the cloud towards one of the gaps in the woven ceiling. It drifted out into the open sky, passing quickly out of the range of his senses.

 _Bye cloud,_ he thought. _I wish I could go too._

"There," he said aloud. "It's gone. Happy?"

Sadie nodded, her expression relaxing.

"I liked your cloud, though," she added after a moment.

"Me too. Do you live here?"

"In the Guildhall? Oh, no. Only the dryads and some of the elves are devout enough to live this close to the Conclave. Mom's here for the Parliament. Me and Gwyn come from Silverthorn vernadi. In the Eighth."

"I live in the Eighth too. Is Gwyn your brother?"

Sadie rolled her eyes. "For now, at least."

"I've got a brother too. But he's little. Mostly he cries a lot."

A high sharp note rose from somewhere nearby and Ral nearly gouged his arm on a branch as he whipped around to find the source. Another note joined it, and another, and then a kind of deep drone that resonated into a thought-destroying chord. Sadie was saying something, he could see her lips moving, but the noise drowned out her voice. She let go of the tree with one hand and gestured frantically downwards. Ral nodded and began to descend. Sadie followed quickly behind him, waiting impatiently while he found his footing, and ran for the archway when they hit the ground. The shelter of the colonnade cut out some of the music and Ral shook his head as if trying to knock something out of his brain.

"What was that?" he asked over the hum vibrating the stone beneath his feet.

"They're calling the Chorus," said Sadie, staring out between two of the columns. She sounded awestruck. "Everyone's joining for communion. I've never heard them do that at a Parliament. They must be talking about something really important." All around them the Guildhall filled with the rustling of leaves, the creak of wood, answering cries of thin and silver sound. Dryads, realized Ral in quiet wonder. The dryads were moving.

Sadie turned away and grabbed his wrist. "Quick, we have to get back. If they're calling the Chorus we'll have to go too."

They ran fast enough that Ral's lungs burned and his legs ached, threatening to quit any second. Even so they had only just reached the boundary of the Oaks when he heard Gatherer Karlin's voice echoing somehow from every tree, calling, "Everyone! Back together, or I'll have the forest bring you here!"

He and Sadie slowed down once they were among the Oaks, catching their breath, and when they made it back to the sigil-grove they almost looked like they hadn't been pelting hell-for-leather down the halls of Vitu-Ghazi. Gatherer Karlin _hmph_ ed at their appearance, but wouldn't yet tell them what was happening. In the meantime Ral got his first good look at Gwyn after the fight. The boy had a nasty bruise across his forehead that had broken and bled in the middle. Must have hit his head pretty hard. Ral's shoulder throbbed painfully. Good.

Another stray pair of children trickled in. They seemed to be the last on Gatherer Karlin's mental list, because he gestured for attention and said, "Everyone, today is going to be a very special day. Today our Guild leader Trostani has called the Chorus, and all of us will join in communion to answer with Mat'Selesnya's voice." He walked to the edge of the grove and gestured for the children to precede him up the path. Ral followed along in silence. He didn't know what _communion_ entailed, and he didn't particularly want to say anything with Mat'Selesnya's voice, but he had heard _dryads_. That would be something to see. Then Gatherer Karlin's hand on his shoulder stopped him in his tracks.

"Not you, Zarek," he said. "This is Guild business."

"But..." He trailed off, for once utterly lost. "Where should I go?" he finally asked.

"Wait here," ordered the gatherer. "Someone will collect you when the Chorus is concluded."

As the gatherer herded the other children up the path a strange and unhappy feeling welled up in Ral's chest, something he couldn't quite put a name to. He didn't even want to go to their weird Guild meeting. But as he watched them go - and the gatherer's hand on his shoulder, the stern voice saying, _Not you, Zarek_ \- and he felt a heat at the corner of his eyes, blinking it away, scrubbing at his face with the back of his hand.

The sun slid across the sky of this little bubble, this preserved memory of a long-vanished forest. The long rays that filtered through the leaves took on an orange hue. He was sitting in the center of the Selesnyan crest with his head tucked against his knees when a familiar voice said, "Hello, my dear."

Ral looked up and got hastily to his feet, running to his mother's side. She laughed and ruffled his hair as he leaned against her. "Did you have a fun day?"

"Not really," he muttered. But honesty compelled him to add, "I saw a big tree. It had plums on it."

"Did you? How wonderful." She ran her hand through his hair again and he pressed his head against the soft cloth of her Temple robes. "You've had a long day, haven't you. Don't worry, we're going home soon."

Ral only nodded silently.

On the carriage ride home his stomach churned again but he ignored it, staring out the window at the endless maze passing by. Spires and bridges and promenades spun through the air, arching to touch each other, obscuring the sky like the branches of the fruit-tree. He stayed silent as they disembarked and climbed the stairs to their apartment, and once inside the door headed for his room. He felt like the back of his brain was busy doing something important without letting him know about it.

He was halfway down the hallway to the stairs when his father said, "Ral, come in the kitchen for a moment."

Ral's stomach dropped. The last time his father had sounded like that, they had told him he was going to have a new baby brother. He turned as slowly as he could while dread pooled in the pit of his stomach. His father was standing in the doorframe watching him. No escape. He trudged into the kitchen and sat at the table, his parents following suit.

"Ral," began his mother, trying to smile. "Erika told me that you and Sadie got along well today, right?"

"She's okay," he muttered.

"And Erika? What did you think about her?"

Ral shrugged.

"Good. I'm glad you got along with them, Ral. Because..." She took a deep breath, reseating her smile. "After your birthday, you're going to go to their house and stay for a little while."

Ral's head jerked up. "I'm what?"

"They're going to be your foster-family."

"My _what?"_

"It's an important Guild rite of passage," his father tried to say. "It's to--"

"You're sending me to live with some complete strangers!?"

"They're not strangers, my dear. They're Guild members, and they're our friends--"

"They're _your_ friends!" spat Ral. He shoved the chair aside and bolted before they could stand, hurtling upstairs fast enough that he nearly fell at the last step. He slammed the door to his room as loudly as he could and once on the inside scrabbled around in the mess of clothing on the floor for a particular tangle of wood and rubber-bands. He yanked and twisted the contraption around the door handle on the inside, fumbling for the pieces through a blur of tears. Once it was secure he threw himself down on the bed, pulled the pillow over his head, and screamed.

It made sense, though, why they would want to send him away. He never managed to do what his parents wanted. He was trouble all the time. He didn't _want_ to be, but it always ended up that way, somehow, and what was he going to do in a situation like that? Back down? Then people would think they could tell him what to do.

The door handle twisted, then jammed against the device Ral had fastened across it. Muttered words outside, then footsteps moving away. Ral pressed the pillow down harder over his head.

He would have liked to sulk there long enough to make his parents worried, really worried, sorry that they'd ever even thought about doing this to him. But after half an hour his stomach began to remind him that he hadn't had anything to eat since the Guildhall. So when a tentative knock sounded at his door and he heard his mother's voice saying, "Ral? Can I come in?" he waited for another minute, then got up and unjammed the door and crawled back into bed.

He heard the door open and shut quietly. Normally his mother would have had something to say about the sea of clothes on his floor, but this time she just picked her way through it. He felt the thin mattress bend as she sat on the edge of the bed.

"Do you want to talk about it?" she said.

"No," mumbled Ral from under his pillow.

His mother put a hand on his exposed back, rubbing it in familiar, comforting motions. "I know this is hard for you. I'm sorry you had to find out today, but... Well, some things had to get moved around, because of the Parliament. Will you give me the chance to explain?"

"Explain what."

"The entire Selesnyan Conclave is like...one big family. People think of themselves as a community first. Everyone else in the Guild is like your brothers and sisters, even if you aren't related by blood. So on their tenth birthday all the children go to spend a year with someone else, so they can make new friends. They call it sowing. Planting seeds."

"We're not in Selesnya!"

"We need to be."

_"Why!?"_

Ral heard his mother sigh and risked a peek out from under his pillow. Her shoulders slumped and the little lines were back around her eyes. "Remember when I told you this morning that the Tenth isn't very safe?"

"Mhm."

"That's because of the Guilds, my dear. Things used to be different, when we had the Guildpact. All of the Guilds knew they could never win, so instead they worked together. Sometimes. Back then nobody joined the Guilds unless they wanted to, and it was all right to be Guildless. You could even work for two different Guilds, or more."

"But the Guildpact's gone."

"Yes. And now there's nothing to keep them from fighting whenever they like. And when they do, it's people like us that get stuck in the middle. We're not safe on our own."

"So we have to join the Selesnya."

"We just need to be part of a vernadi, earn a measure of Guild protection. It'll keep you and Jaromir safe. When you're part of a Guild, you're never alone."

Ral stuck his head back under the pillow. "Then how come Grandmother Marzanna gets to live in the Tenth," he mumbled into his mattress.

"Oh, Ral. I wish you wouldn't ask me about that."

"I want to know."

"Did I ever tell you why your grandfather left grandmother's house and brought us back here?" The pillow wiggled from side to side. "My mother leads a dangerous life, Ral. She...involves herself in Guild politics, but refuses to join a Guild. That makes her a target for certain very bad people. People who would hurt anyone if they thought it would get them what they wanted. Even her daughter. Even her little baby grandson."

Ral stayed silent. She began again, a faint note of hope in her voice. "We're still only...affiliates, so we can't be part of the real sowing. But Erika has agreed to take you on for a few months. Informally. Erika's been helping us a lot, even though you might not see it, my dear. She wants us to join the Guild."

"The other kids don't want us to. They made fun of the Temple."

"There aren't many of us left who keep the old faiths. Even fewer now, after the nephilim. People will always be afraid of things that are different. But the Conclave welcomes everyone who shows respect to Mat'Selesnya. Erika remembers that. She's a good person."

"So I have to go live with this stupid family."

"It's only for a few months. And we'll come visit you all the time. And you'll still go to Temple lessons and see all your classmaters and your cousins. It won't be that different. This is a good chance for you to make some new friends." She patted his back again. "Think of it as an adventure, Ral. You'll get to see a whole new part of the city."

"I don't want to," he muttered, but he couldn't tamp down a little flare of excitement at the idea. He _would_ see a new part of the city, wouldn't he? New buildings and new streets and new rooftops, new Golgari-made beetles swarming between the cobblestones and new skyjeks in the distance. And Sadie didn't seem too bad. Except for her brother. But he wasn't worried. He would be ready for Gwyn this time.

"My little thundercloud," said his mother softly. "It will be hard, but I know you understand. It's all to keep you safe."


	3. The Precise Nature of the Catastrophe

_"Brawwwwwwwk!"_

Ral groaned and tried to bury his face in his thin excuse for a pillow. It made no difference. Whatever the birds were angry about, they were determined to share it with the entire vernadi.

_"Craaaaaaw! Craaw!"_

_"Brkkkk!"_

He gave up on sleep when the birds he had silently named The Crows That Scream Like People decided to join in the festivities. Instead he sat up, remembering just in time to duck to avoid hitting his head on the ceiling. His bunk only had about two feet of space above it, which was why he'd been able to get it routinely each night. He didn't care. It was high up, and therefore safe. Ral yawned again, rubbing his eyes, and pulled down the hem of his pale green sleeping-tunic.

More angry _caws_ and _awwwks_ sounded through the newly-opened curtains near the entrance to the children's rest hall as he clambered down the short wooden ladder. A few of the beds still had other kids sleeping in them, but most were empty and neatly-made, their occupants having dispersed with the dawn. Ral staggered to the elaborately-carved screen that made up the whole inner wall of the rest hall, shoved the curtains aside a little further, and peered out through a gap between wooden flowers. Another scream echoed in the central garden and a black-and-blue shape took wing. The shadows cast by the inner eaves of the vernadi's roof still fell high on the trunk of the Silverthorn city-tree at the garden's center. A few rays glittered off the brilliant lace of thorn-vines that crowned the tree near its top. Not even seven yet. Ugh.

Ral let the curtain fall back and did his best to ignore the raucous cries. Most of the square lockers against the side wall were already open and empty, their contents reclaimed. Ral tried to remember which one he'd gotten last night; it took a couple of wrong guesses before he found his day-clothes. He shook them out of the bundle he'd wadded them up in before shoving them into the cubbyhole, yawned, then wondered if he needed to take them to the laundry. The very thought made him groan. That would make him late, and _that_ would get him extra Temple chores. It was fine, he decided. He'd washed them a couple of days ago, he could get away with one more.

The communal mess hall was deserted by the time he got there, of course. A handful of people drifted about, mostly cleaning tables and preparing for the noon meal. Ral found one of the few trays that the cooks begrudgingly left out for those who for whatever reason couldn't eat with everyone else, the way they were supposed to, and carried it to a corner table far away from the workers. Once he sat down he shoved aside the wide green leaves covering the plate and inspected the menu for today. It looked like more of that soft white squishy stuff Sadie told him they made out of beans. Gross. He tried to swallow without tasting it and contemplated how many people he would happily kill for a slice of cheese or a decent sausage. If the Selesnyans' bizarre diet were really meant to turn his mind from thoughts of cruelty, it wasn't working.

When he'd eaten as much of the stuff as he could stomach, he returned the tray and headed out into the wide courtyard that enclosed the vernadi's great garden. The inner wall of every walkway was to some degree open, admitting the soothing sight of the vernadi's central tree as well as a truly upsetting number of insects. He encountered only a few others in the hallways as he went, all adults, all of whom gave him a startled glance before they saw his unusual clothing and remembered _oh, right, Ral the foreign boy._ He had nearly gotten himself into trouble yelling the first time an adult he'd never met addressed him by name, before Woodshaper Erika had taken him aside and explained about communion and the sharing of memories. _Now they all know who you are, and that you're with us,_ she'd said. _It's like having lots and lots of parents all at once. Doesn't that make you feel better? Here, you're never alone._

Ral breathed a quiet sigh of relief when he passed the guards at the vernadi's tall front doors and descended the stairs back to reality. Ravnica's grumbling grinding chorus sprang up around him and he basked in the sound. It would take him about an hour to reach the Temple if he walked straight there, but today he had other stops along the way. First, an alley two blocks over and three stories up, where he scaled the wall, pulled a brick from the underside of a supporting arch, and extracted his battered leather satchel. He sat cross-legged on a ledge and dumped the contents onto his lap: a worn twist of copper, an curiously blotchy piece of wood from the vernadi garden, and the meager allotment of coin his parents had sent with him as his allowance. Ral hadn't yet figured out how to tell them that the vernadi had no use for coin and no place to put it anyway, and that asking about it had only gotten him stern looks and a scolding for being selfish. Hiding it was easier. And the Conclave _definitely_ wasn't getting his favorite bag.

Ral ran his fingers over the copper, put some of the coins into his pocket, put the rest back in the satchel, and hid it again. Back at street level he detoured again towards one of the broad thoroughfares that sliced through the city and portioned out the districts. He didn't dare the boulevard itself - too many people, too many thieves, too many carriages disinclined to stop - but he found a hooded vendor with a Golgari guildmark and a rack of roasting meat down one of the side streets. It took nearly fifteen minutes to make the seller understand the Tanish ban on eating shellfish, and a skewer of something whose origin didn't bear much thinking about - but which, the food-seller promised, had not been shelled - ended up costing him nearly a third of his coin. He didn't care. The ripe rich taste of meat filled him up and finally chased away some of the irritation from this morning's early awakening. He walked a little taller as he headed towards the Temple at last, licking his fingers and making certain there were no stains to tell the Selesnyans that he was breaking their stupid rules.

The day passed in a blur of mundane exercises, mostly reciting melodic verses from the Cant that he had long since memorized. The oldest students were in the midst of preparing to take their initiate vows and arrangements for their tests and rites diverted most of the Temple's resources; even Ral's usual lunchtime tangle with Cousin Timofey and Cousin Stefan only got them all a tired warning. After book-lessons Ral sat in one of the little individual practice rooms and drew pictures in his clouds, then got bored and found a bucket and some rags and Cousin Ivanna yawning in the scriptorium. One of the older classes, the first-level initiates, was in a group room practicing Crown disciplines and they snuck in, pretending to clean the tiled walls as they listened. The air in the room chilled their fingers to the bone and Ivanna had to keep breaking the thin rime of ice that formed inside the bucket. Over and over Instructor Elias conjured a miniature blizzard, calling the student-mages forward one by one to try to dismiss its killing frosts before they could freeze an imaginary farm. When Ral heard the sixteen bells they dropped the rags back into the water and abandoned the lackluster cleaning halfway through a mosaic of Tanit of the Gentle Sun presenting humans with the first calendar-stone. Ivanna ran back upstairs to her copy-work and and Instructor Agacio found Ral an hour later in his room with ice in his hair trying to convince a drift of fog that it wanted to be snow instead.

"Student Zarek," he called. Ral jerked around in surprise and dispelled the cloud, wary and waiting for the inevitable rebuke. But the exhausted Instructor only sighed and said, "Dismissed for the day."

Ral nodded and hurried out before Agacio could change his mind; behind him, the Instructor inspected the icy walls with a raised eyebrow. Then, with a gesture and a shake of his head, he collapsed the frost and let it drain away.

 

* * *

 

"Do you think there are other worlds?"

Sadie gave him an odd look as if she were trying not to frown. "Is this a Tanit thing?" she asked warily. "Like a heaven?"

"No, I don't care about that." Ral jabbed at the wobbling mass that was apparently dinner. "I mean other worlds like here."

"There aren't any other worlds like here."

"How do you know?"

"Because everyone says there aren't?"

"What if they do know, but they're not telling?"

"Why would they do that?" Sadie sounded genuinely perplexed. Ral stirred the mysterious green spheres on one side of his plate with a fork, trying to think of another way to ask the question.

He didn't get a chance to try again, though, because then he heard his name and looked up to see Woodshaper Erika setting down her tray and taking a seat on the bench across the table from him and Sadie. He suppressed a shudder. Woodshaper Erika was nice and showed him things sometimes and he didn't mind her, but if she were here then that meant...

Gwyn slid in to the bench next to his mother and made an ugly face at Ral, knowing Ral couldn't make one back without his mother seeing it. Instead Ral only glared, narrowing his eyes a fraction, and maybe reached out to send a chill gust down the back of Gwyn's neck.

"How was the - temple today?" asked Erika a little too cheerfully, as she picked up the pitcher of water nearest them and poured herself a glass.

"Fine," said Ral to his plate of food. "We worked on snow."

"That sounds very exciting," said Erika. Ral shrugged. For a moment she seemed to be searching for another question, but to Ral's relief she gave up and turned to Sadie instead. "How did the roses go?"

Sadie's eyes widened and she nearly dropped her fork in her haste to talk about all the flowers she'd seen that day. Ral concentrated on trying not to concentrate on the taste of the food he was eating. All around him the communal hall rang with the sounds of a thousand Selesnyans eating their evening meal, complaining and telling stories and talking about what they would do the next day; but to Ral it all felt like a conversation in another room, a pageantry in which he played no part.

 

* * *

 

The birds were at it again.

Ral tried out one of the new swear words he'd picked up from a careless Temple mage, but rolled over and sat up anyways. A month of mornings had finally resigned him to the fact that there was no going back to sleep once the birds got started. When he rubbed his eyes and looked over the edge of the bunk bed he cursed again. The birds had woken up especially early today. Most of the other children were still getting ready before scattering to morning lessons and tasks. He climbed down the ladder and joined the general press of people as they crowded around the lockers to retrieve clothing and shoes and the few personal trinkets the younger children were still permitted.

"Three down, five left," he muttered under his breath as he pushed through the crowd. Three rows down, five columns in from the left. He counted lockers till he reached the right spot and opened the carved wooden door, calculating how much time he could reasonably spend on his own in the city before he had to be at the Temple for morning chant.

The locker was empty.

Ral stepped back, frowning, and counted again. Three down, five left. No, this was it. Maybe he'd remembered the wrong directions? Memorizing a different locker every evening made his brain prone to confusing today's location with yesterday's, or a week ago. He checked the inside of his wrist. No, there was "3D5L" written in tiny ink letters next to the crossed-out location from yesterday. He even swiped his hand across the bare wooden floor of the cubby in the bizarre hope that he was somehow failing to see his bundle of clothing. Nothing. His Temple clothes were gone.

"You're up early, rain mage."

Ral took a deep breath, closing his eyes for a moment as he reassessed the situation. Then he turned around. Gwyn was already dressed in his white and green day-clothes and he'd brought at least four of the other kids that were always, for some unfathomable reason, chasing his approval. The last vestiges of sleep fled and anger nested warm and comfortable in Ral's chest. So that was how today was going to go.

"What do you want," he said flatly.

"Nothing," said Gwyn sweetly.

"Give them back," said Ral, still keeping his voice cold and even.

"Not sure what you're talking about, rain mage. Lose something?"

Well, no one could say he hadn't warned them. "Give them _back,"_ repeated Ral. "I'm not asking again." The sleeping hall had gone silent around them. Everyone edged away from the circle of space marked out by Ral and Gwyn.

"Oh, wait, now that you mention it--" Gwyn feigned exaggerated surprise. One of his companions snickered. "I think I remember one of the cleaners talking about throwing away some of their old rags last night."

Ral didn't know what to say to that. So he hit Gwyn in the gut.

After that the world became a blur of legs and arms and pain. Fury surged in his blood, drove a berserker strength into his muscles, and he only noticed later that he was screaming the entire time. That was probably what tipped off the gatherer. He didn't know how long it was before strong hands grabbed his shoulders and yanked him out of the melee, still kicking and thrashing and screaming. Another gatherer pulled at Gwyn's arm, but he stood up on his own and readjusted his clothing, smirking at Ral.

"Children!" boomed the gatherer holding on to Ral. "Why have you disrupted the harmony of your home?"

"He started it," said Gwyn quickly.

Ral snarled. " _He_ started it!" he yelled. "He took my clothes!"

"Zarek hit him," chimed in one of Gwyn's companions.

"Is this true?" said the gatherer, looking around the silent crowd that now stood frozen under their minders' gaze. A chorus of muttered affirmations rippled through them.

"I had to!" growled Ral. "He wouldn't give them back!"

"I don't know what he's talking about," Gwyn told the gatherer with a casual shrug. "He said he lost something, I offered to help, and he just struck me!"

Ral managed to regain enough control to go still in the gatherer's grip. He glared at Gwyn. A faint chill curled around him and he realized he'd been pulling mana without thinking. He quickly banished it again.

"Return to your lessons," said the gatherer that still held him, raising his voice to address the crowd. The children dispersed quietly, all of them sneaking glances back at them. "Gwyn, you too." Ral thrashed again in his grip at this calm dismissal of his nemesis and the gatherer's hand tightened hard enough to bruise his collarbone. He went still.

"Of course, Gatherer," said Gwyn, all respectful obedience. His expression of smug innocence made Ral want to hit him again, but the gatherer didn't release his grip on Ral's shoulder till everyone else had filtered out of the sleeping hall. Then he let Ral tug himself free and stand sullenly on his own. Now that the thrill of the fight had begun to fade Ral's many fresh bruises began to make themselves known. A sharp pain on one forearm turned out to be a two-inch-long scrape he'd suffered somewhere along the way. He hoped Gwyn had one. He hoped Gwyn had two.

"Zarek," said the gatherer, looming over him. "You will go to the garden and wait beneath the city-tree. You will be informed of your punishment shortly."

"Can I have some day-clothes before I go?" asked Ral, tugging at the hem of his thin sleeping shirt.

It cheered him up slightly to watch the gatherer struggle between the necessity of delivering his charge without delay and the necessity of not sending him out into the vernadi without the proper attire. Eventually attire won and Ral found himself shoved into one of the small changing-stalls with a pile of mismatched clothing from the common bin. The pants were too short and the shirt was too long, but he rolled up the sleeves and stood tall. His sullen pride lasted all the way through the walk down to the garden and the city-tree, and some few minutes after the gatherer left him. Then reality began to penetrate. He kicked at the grass under the stone bench. He was definitely going to be late for Temple today. In fact it seemed like maybe he wouldn't make it there at all, which meant that tomorrow he would be in dire trouble indeed. Plus Instructor Agacio would tell his parents.

But anyway, what was he supposed to do? Just let Gwyn treat him like that? _Nobody_ had the right to treat him like that. People needed to know what would happen if they tangled with Ral Zarek.

"He put them in the basement laundry," said a voice. Ral looked up from methodically destroying grass. Sadie had come down to the garden and stood a few feet away, looking as impassive as her brother.

"He didn't mess them up or anything," she added. "Otherwise the adults would catch him for real."

"Did you know he was going to do it?" said Ral. He hadn't meant to say it but when he opened his mouth the wounded flame in his chest overwhelmed everything else.

Sadie hesitated. "I didn't think he meant it," she said at last.

"Well I guess he did," spat Ral.

Sadie went silent. The pain in Ral's chest slid into unexpected remorse and he looked back down at the grass.

"I'm sorry about Gwyn," said Sadie, quieter. "He's not like this most of the time. This is... Mom would have stopped it, if he'd been acting like this before."

"I guess I'm just special, then."

"It has to be because of the Seven Seeds," she went on. "I mean, everyone knows about it, but Gwyn's gotten obsessed. I don't know why."

"What?"

Sadie paused, then said, "Don't you know about the Seven Seeds?"

Ral's brow furrowed. "No?"

"But it's really important. Don't they teach you things at the Temple?"

"Well I guess not Selesnyan things," said Ral, more than a little irritated. "Are you going to tell me about it or what?"

"It's..." Sadie seemed a little uncertain about how to begin, as if Ral had just asked her to explain what a tree was. She sat down next to him on the stone bench, careful to leave enough room to claim that she wasn't helping out someone who was in trouble if an adult came by. "So hundreds and hundreds of years ago there was a beautiful vernadi called _Lleinnondel_. It's Old Elvish, it means... 'Where the sunlight falls upon the river.' Or something. Anyway, it was huge and beautiful. People said that you could stand in the center of the garden and feel Mat'Selesnya itself all around you. It was the greatest of the vernadis. Almost as important as Vitu-Ghazi itself."

"So what?"

"So after the Guildpact was broken, the nephilim came. They were buried for thousands and thousands of years but the Cult dug them up and let them out and they wrecked everything."

"I thought they got killed," said Ral, but a note of uncertainty made it into his voice.

"Not before they ate up a lot of the city." Sadie's expression had turned sad, dark, remembering something even her grandparents hadn't been alive for. "They destroyed Lleinnondel completely, because it was beautiful and they hated it. The people ran with whatever they could carry but only some of them got away. A lot of people died and all the wonderful things in Lleinnondel were smashed and broken forever. The survivors had to found vernadis wherever they ended up, smaller ones, but they always remembered Lleinnondel. There were seven new ones, so they're the Seven Scattered Seeds."

"Fine, that's all terrible, what does any of it have to do with _me?"_

"Because it was the Cult of Yore that let the nephilim out. One of the old religions. And you're..."

Belatedly the shape of the story became all too clear. "Silverthorn is one of them, isn't it," said Ral gloomily.

Sadie nodded. "So is Speaking Wood." When Ral looked puzzled she added, "Where Gwyn fostered. Ever since he came back he's been taking this stuff really seriously."

"Great," said Ral.

"Look it's stupid. Gwyn's just being stupid," said Sadie in a rush. "He'll stop it once he's old enough for communion. You're nice and you didn't do it. It's dumb to get mad at you for it."

"I don't even _want_ to be in the stupid Temple!" burst out Ral. Sadie looked shocked. "Who cares about farms and fields and rain!? Ravnica hasn't had open land in centuries! But all they do is say the same old prayers and do the same exact things they did back then!"

"But...it's your home."

"No it isn't," said Ral dully. "My home isn't anywhere."

Whatever Sadie had to say to that disappeared into a distant rustle of grass. Both of them looked up sharply. Before Ral could say anything Sadie bolted into the brush around the base of the tree and vanished.

To his surprise it was Woodshaper Erika who came up the path. Ral hung his head and went back to kicking at the grass. The woodshaper sat down next to him in an unknowing echo of her daughter.

"That's twice in a month, Ral," she finally said.

Ral only kicked more fiercely.

"Gatherer Miran tells me that you started the fight."

"I did not!" he snapped. "Well. Okay. I hit him first. But Gwyn _started_ it."

Erika raised a skeptical eyebrow. "Did he?"

"He stole my Temple clothes. I told him to give them back. But he wouldn't." His mouth twisted into a grimace and he muttered, "So I hit him."

Erika was silent for a little while after that. She must have noticed his unusual outfit at last. Ral gave up on the grass and just stared at the ground, trying to figure out where the day had gotten away from him.

"That was wrong of Gwyn," said Erika. "But it was also wrong of you to hit him."

"He wouldn't give them back. What was I supposed to do?"

"Find a gatherer and tell them."

Ral stayed silent. The thought had honestly never occurred to him. Next to him Erika sighed and said, "Ral, I know this is hard for you, and I know Gwyn and some of the other kids haven't been - as welcoming as Selesnyans should be. But you must learn to control that temper of yours, too. As long as you're here, you're part of the vernadi, and the vernadi has the deciding voice."

"I'm the one whose clothes he took."

"No," said Erika. "When he did that, he acted against all of us, and it is all of us who will decide the consequences. The authority of punishment belongs to the vernadi, not to you."

"The vernadi should punish him, then."

"It will. And it will punish you, too."

"For what!?"

"For sowing discord in a place of harmony, Ral. You will not fight within the confines of the vernadi. No matter what Gwyn does, violence remains forbidden."

"What should I do, then?"

"Tell an adult. If he's trying to provoke you, find a quiet place and ignore him."

Ral chewed this over silently. Violence was forbidden? Even when Gwyn was bothering him? Then how was he supposed to stop him?

"Am I in trouble?" he asked instead.

"Yes," said Erika. The note of sadness in her voice did nothing to ease the humiliation. "Kitchen duties for the next two weeks, I'm afraid. You'll have to work the dinner shift."

"Fine." He shifted uneasily. "I have to go to Temple," he reminded her. "I'm already late."

"Oh. Right. Yes, of course." Erika seemed suddenly uncomfortable. "Do you need the clothes that Gwyn took? Are they, ah, sacred?"

"What?" said Ral, perplexed. "No, they're just Temple clothes. They're just--" He shrugged. "The things you wear to Temple."

"Right," said Erika, seeming no less confused. "Well then. You should be on your way."

 

* * *

 

Gwyn stayed away from him for a week, presumably waiting until the adults forgot about the incident. _His mistake,_ thought Ral. All that did was give him time to think, and he was pretty sure he thought a lot faster than Gwyn did. Instructor Agacio enjoyed an unexpected stretch of peace as his problem student paid marginal attention to his lessons, his mind occupied elsewhere. Gwyn wouldn't stop of his own accord, that much was clear, and none of the adults seemed inclined to restrain him. Ral would therefore have to make himself an unacceptable target. Ral would have to make it such that his adversary wouldn't dare touch him for fear of his retaliation. He wasn't allowed to fight Gwyn? Fine. There were other ways to make someone's life miserable.

Ironically it ended up being his punishment that gave him the first idea. He dutifully reported for kitchen duty every afternoon after Temple, stirring pots and half-heartedly chopping a bewildering array of vegetables. Once the service began his job switched over to ladling soup into bowls and bringing the dirty plates back to the dishwashers. His shift only ended when dinner did, and by then even the weird white bean stuff started to look appetizing.

"Stop!" yelled one of the cooks a moment before Ral reached for another handful of strange greenery. "Boy, don't touch those roots!"

"What?" said Ral. He looked down at the cutting board, baffled. If he'd done something wrong, for once he had no idea what it was.

The cook stomped over with a thunderous look on his face. The kitchen, Ral had discovered, was one of the few places where Selesnyans relaxed their taboo on displays of anger. Harmony took a back seat when a thousand hungry guild members were banging at the door.

"These!" said the cook, jabbing his finger towards a piece of the produce waiting next in line for Ral's attention. It didn't look much different from the others: a slim green spear of folded leaves with a white bulb at the bottom and some sort of yellowish buds at the top. "Bindweed has no business in the kitchen! Rupture the yellow sacs and everything will smell of sewage for a week, understand?"

"I didn't know."

"Well, now you do." The cook gathered up the offending vegetables with both hands, careful not to handle the toxic buds. "Where did you get these?"

Ral shrugged. "They were in the basket."

The cook spat an obscenity, found a small pot, and gently set the bindweed inside it before putting it on a high shelf. Then he stomped away from Ral's station already yelling, "Gabi! Where's that stupid vegetable boy!?"

Ral pulled the next batch of plants that needed chopping onto his board, but as his hands went through the motions his mind worked on something else entirely. He'd never heard of a plant called bindweed before, but loathe as he was to admit it the splendor of the vernadi's garden had made him realize just how unacquainted he was with the flora of Ravnica.

Before he could question the impulse he reached up and retrieved the pot. He stuffed a clean-ish dish towel into a container, then carefully extracted a single spear of bindweed. One slice of his knife and he had a handful of small yellowish sacs, smooth and faintly translucent. They went into the container and Ral managed to re-cover the pot and shove it back onto its shelf before the cook returned.

Not on Gwyn's skin, or on his clothes. That would be too obvious. Somewhere else, somewhere clever, somewhere he would eventually discover and know, though there was no proof, precisely who had done it.

Ral kept chopping, hiding his grin.

 

* * *

 

Sadie sat back on her knees and dropped her trowel into the dark soil in front of her. "Stop doing that. You're going to fall over."

"I am not," said Ral. He continued his careful walk along the top of the slim wooden dividers that portioned out the flower beds.

"You are so, and you're going to mess up my soil."

"I am not," repeated Ral. But he crossed over to a wooden beam that didn't border Sadie's particular flowerbed. Sadie grunted in reluctant acceptance and went back to turning over dirt, mixing in a series of sands and clays that all came in different bags and all looked pretty much alike to Ral. He paused at a corner and pointed at a vibrant blue powder. "What's that one for?"

"Ral, quit it."

"I'm _bored."_

"Why can't you go help with a ritual or something?"

"Not allowed to," said Ral. He hazarded a small jump across a corner to another beam. "Everybody who's not an initiate has to clear out while the students do their tests."

"Aren't you an initiate?"

Ral looked confused. "Of course not. I'm a student."

"When do you get to be an initiate?"

"When your Instructor says you can," grumbled Ral. "But mostly you have to be at least thirteen."

"Ugh," said Sadie, and stabbed at the dirt with her trowel.

Ral jumped off the beams onto the grass, walking a few steps along the footpath that bordered the flowerbeds. He considered the sky. Clear, same as it had been for the past week. Gross. He began to hum a quiet tune and moved one hand in midair as if stirring the tall pots back in the kitchen. White fog drifted outwards from his fingers and quickly pooled into a cold puff of cloud. Ral let it drift up slowly, the melody dividing his attention between the growing length of cloud and the new mist forming at the bottom. When it had plumed up to a few meters tall a breath of wind caught it. The top shredded and smeared out, blocking the sun.

Sadie looked up at the sudden shadow. "Ral," she said in warning.

"We're not in Vitu-Ghazi," retorted Ral. "Plus I'm practicing my lessons. Nobody can get mad at me for practicing my lessons."

"My mom said that if you make trouble outside then you'll wake Niv-Mizzet up and he'll get angry and come eat you," said Sadie.

Ral scoffed. "He can't eat me."

"Who's going to stop him?"

Ral opened his mouth, then halted, confused. He had never thought about it from that angle before.

"The Boros?" he hazarded, but even as he said it he knew it was the wrong answer.

"You're so stupid sometimes!" said Sadie. "If the Boros tried to stop him he'd just eat them too. Niv-Mizzet's a million years old and nothing can kill him and he can do whatever he wants."

"That's not true," said Ral, automatically, while his brain grappled with this concept.

"It is so," said Sadie.

"He's only fifteen thousand years old."

"Says Niv-Mizzet. Maybe he's a billion years old and he just doesn't want us to know about it."

"Well, then how do you know nothing can kill him, either? Maybe he just said that."

"He killed two of the nephilim. Even Rakdos only killed one."

"Why didn't he kill them all?"

"Mom says he got bored and flew off because he's egomaniacal." Sadie looked briefly proud at having managed the word.

"Then he probably wouldn't bother coming all the way out here to eat me," said Ral. "What are you doing now?"

Sadie growled in very un-harmonic irritation. "Can't you go annoy mom? Or Gwyn?"

"I don't know where they are."

"They're in the woodshapers' workshop."

Ral paused in his cloudmaking. "Gwyn's a woodshaper too?"

"Well, not _yet_. But eventually." Sadie shrugged. "He likes little trees. I'm sick of hearing about them. They don't even make flowers. But mom's happy to have an apprentice."

Ral's cloud surged in his grip and darkened abruptly. He dispelled it with a swift gesture before it could do anything more serious.

"Where's the woodshaper workshop?" he asked.

"Second level, all along the eastern side," said Sadie, not looking away from her soil. "They get the sun there. Come on, Ral, I need to finish this bed before dusk. The marigolds have to go in today if they're going to have enough time to root."

Silence greeted her. She turned around, confused, and Ral was gone.

 

* * *

 

The woodshaper's workshop was not, as he had feared, difficult to identify. A pair of trees had been woven - carved - perhaps both - into an arch made up of a series of simple curves whose slim beauty stopped him in his tracks. He traced one graceful beam with his fingertips hovering just above the surface, unwilling to touch it directly. Branches in a thousand subtle shades braided together beneath them to form a pair of tall doors. One of them stood open wide and Ral peeked around the edge. The workshop hummed with purposeful noise as dozens of Guild members worked, tending to odd plants, fashioning staffs and wands and other implements, shaping stranger things he couldn't identity. Braided white and green cords draped along the ceiling steered broad currents of mana that flowed in from the vernadi's central garden. On a hunch Ral followed one with a familiar twist to it into the sea of activity. As he walked he caught puzzled glances with increasing frequency and shifted his gaze to the smooth hardwood floor, trying not to get distracted by them.

Sure enough, he found Erika at the other end of the stream of familiar mana, nearly all the way across the workshop by the huge windows that made up the eastern wall. She didn't notice him at first and so he waited for a moment, watching her work. She had a small bush - a sapling? - on a worktable, and had trimmed away half its branches. Now she took another branch, this one covered in little white flowers, and pressed the base of it against the trunk of the bush. Without looking away she reached towards a set of tools laid out on green cloth, but came up short. She groped around blindly with one hand, still holding the branch in place with the other. Ral leaned over and pushed the cloth towards Erika till her fingers found the edge and pulled the rest towards her. She grunted in some distant internal satisfaction, reminding Ral all at once of her daughter, grabbed a strange implement that trailed loops of string, and focused on the joint between the branch and the trunk. A minute and quite a bit of work later she stepped back to examine the new joint and finally noticed him.

"Ral!" she said, surprised. "Sweetheart, what are you doing here?" She put down her odd tool and gave him a smile.

"I got bored," he muttered to the floor. "Can't go to Temple today."

"Aha. Well then." She cast around herself. "I've got six more grafts to complete today, but... I suppose you can stay and watch if you want to."

"Okay," said Ral, brightening immediately. Before Erika could say anything more he darted to one of the emptier workbenches and pulled himself up to sit on its edge. The faintest hint of a frown creased Erika's brow, but she only said, "You can't ask me questions all the time, though."

"Okay," said Ral, sounding significantly less excited this time. Erika sighed and offered, "How about I explain as I go along?"

Ral sat up straight and listened with rapt attention. He hadn't completely believed Sadie when she told him in Vitu-Ghazi that the tree with forty fruits had been made without magic, but as Erika worked the only mana he saw her manipulate wrapped around the branches waiting to be attached - "grafted," Erika called it. When he finally broke and asked her, she said the cantrip kept them fresh away from their parent trees, and that that was about the extent of her magecraft. She meticulously cut and joined the living plants without any sort of spell, and when she set the finished hybrids aside, if he squinted and focused on the image of Tanit of the Rains, he could make out the separate threads of vitality within them mingling into a new whole.

"Mom, he's sitting on my table," whined a familiar voice behind him.

"It's not your table, Gwyn," said Erika without looking up from her delicate manipulations.

"He's sitting on the table I'm using."

Ral shoved himself hastily off the edge of the worktable. "I am not."

"Ral, let Gwyn use the table. Gwyn, Ral is visiting us for the day. Make him feel welcome."

Gwyn glared at Ral over the little potted bush he was cradling in his arms. "Why's he visiting?" he asked his mother.

"Because he is, Gwyn." Erika chipped away a final splinter and held the end of the branch up for inspection. "Why don't you show him the trees you're taking care of?"

"Do I have to," muttered Gwyn.

"Trees?" said Ral.

"Yes, you do," said Erika. "Mind your work, my dear."

"You have trees?" Ral asked Gwyn. For a moment a burst of curiosity swallowed his anger. "What for? How'd you get trees inside?"

Gwyn, much to his surprise, stood a little straighter. "They're not like any kind of trees _you've_ ever seen." He set down the pot he was carrying. "I guess you can come and look. But you'd better not touch anything."

Ral followed him warily towards one of the many graceful structures set near the windows. The broad, low shelves held a scattering of what looked like more little bushes in beautifully colored pots. Gwyn stood next to the shelves, puffed up with pride.

Ral eyed the plants intently. "Those aren't trees," he said at last.

"Yes they are," insisted Gwyn. "You would know that if you actually looked at them."

Ral gave him a considering glance, but moved closer. The shelves were built low to the ground and he knelt to examine the closest of the plants. _Gwyn's right,_ he thought in mute surprise. What looked like a squat bush from afar revealed itself as an entire tree made in miniature. This one looked like the Ivory Oaks, all slender bone-white limbs and delicate fluttering leaves, except that the entire plant stood no more than a foot high.

"They're called _pensai_. It takes years and years to make them," declared Gwyn behind him. "It's really hard. That one is eighty years old."

"It is not," blurted Ral, incredulous.

"It is. The _pensai_ shapers pass them down for generations. Only the most skilled people are allowed to take care of them."

"It doesn't sound too hard to water a little tree."

"You don't know anything about _pensai,"_ scoffed Gwyn. "Everything has to be right for them. They need just the right amount of water and light and you have to know how to prune them and what kind of soil they need. It doesn't use any magic at all. Just talent and patience."

Ral kept his expression carefully blank, but it was an effort. Gwyn might be annoying but the _pensai_ trees themselves fascinated him. He kind of wished Gwyn would go away so he could admire them properly. But the boy hovered over his shoulder with a gloating expression and Ral forced himself to stand and say, "They're okay, I guess. If you like trees."

"I'm not surprised you don't understand," said Gwyn. "Fine, go bother Mom. I need to work on my new one anyway."

"Make sure you don't lose it," said Ral over his shoulder as he headed back to Erika's workspace, but it was a poor retort and he knew it. In his mind he mourned for the _pensai_. How could the vernadi be stupid enough to give something so beautiful to a boy like _that?_

 

* * *

 

_Waves lapped gently against the sand, made mirrors that reflected the darkening sky, the dying sun. On the other horizon rose a pale green moon._

_A roar split the sky and the little waves shivered and shattered apart as the water heaved itself into--_

Ral woke up.

For a moment he couldn't understand the darkness around him; for a moment it seemed he was nowhere at all. Then weight returned, and space, and Ral sat up in his bunk. Blood pounded in his ears and his skull felt full to bursting. He stretched his arms as far as he could without striking the sleeping hall's low ceiling, then pressed his fingers into his temples. It wasn't a headache, not exactly; it was like his brain wanted _out._

Another dream. Another place. A new one this time. Whenever he closed his eyes that beach rose up again, that grasping water. Sleep wasn't going to return - or else it was, and he was going back _there,_ and he wasn't certain which was worse.

Instead he felt through the dark for the ladder and descended as quietly as he could. The soft yellow lamps in their vine-covered sconces were dark, but the cityglow filtered in through the gap between the curtains and drew a long dull line across the floor. Night in Ravnica was never truly dark.

Ral padded silently to the drawn curtains and looked out. The city-tree's silhouette rose against the sky. The tips of its branches caught distant light on silver thorns. He stuck a finger in his ear and tried in vain to chase away that strange tension. It pressed against his eyes; it wanted him to _move._

The door to the sleeping-hall didn't lock. Ral had already discovered that this was true of most doors in the vernadi, which mostly served to make the few that _were_ locked the target of endless fascination. He eased one oaken door open wide enough to slip out and stand in the inner corridors that ringed the garden. The children's rest hall had been built on the first floor up and when he leaned over the vine-draped railing he looked down a few meters' drop.

Silverthorn lay quiet around him, echoing to the hum of the garden's night-insects; the sonic wards here, though not as powerful as Vitu-Ghazi's, still blocked most of the familiar city sounds. The image of the beach still burned in the darkness every time he closed his eyes. He tried to press the sight of his true surroundings into his mind instead, but the dream and the vernadi seemed equally foreign, equally real.

He walked around the mezzanine to the eastern wall, climbed the spiral stairs to the second floor, all the while telling himself he just needed to move around.

He was, he told himself, just curious if the woodshapers' workshop was one of the locked doors.

It wasn't.

The workshop, too, was dark, but the woodshapers had fashioned its wide windows to catch every ray of sun and he could see perfectly well by the secondhand city light. He wove his way through the tables, tools gone silent and cold, the flow of mana in the air dimmed to a trickle.

The _pensai_ hadn't gone anywhere. Maybe they hadn't moved in decades. Ral crouched near another of the miniature trees, this one twisted and gnarled with little spikes instead of regular leaves. He reached out with one careful finger and touched the dark green needles. They felt tough and waxy. Could this tiny plant really be eighty years old? Or older? He thought of the immense tree that was Vitu-Ghazi. Maybe it could.

Gwyn was supposed to take care of the _pensai_. Ral didn't like him, and he didn't know much about little trees - yet - but he grudgingly concluded that Gwyn seemed to be doing a good job. No wonder he was proud of them.

What if Gwyn made a mistake, though? _They need just the right amount of water and light,_ he'd boasted. What if one of them got a little too much water? _It would get sick,_ he answered silently. _And everyone would think Gwyn messed up._ Maybe they would even take the _pensai_ away and give them to someone else.

And Gwyn wouldn't be able to prove a thing.

Ral gathered the moisture in the workshop air, focusing it into a plume of mist as he gathered mana between his hands. White shreds coalesced above the tiny twisting branches.

"Rain mage?" he whispered to himself. A sly grin spread across his face. "I'll show you what a rain mage can do."

 

* * *

 

The massive bronze bell atop the Temple's roof was chiming eighteen when Instructor Agacio dismissed him at last. Water soaked the front of Ral's clothes and stray ice crystals still frosted half of his hair from the exercises his Instructor had decided he needed to be put through to ensure he hadn't been, Tanit forbid, _slacking off_ while the Temple had been closed for initiation rites. A few times there Ral had even had to pay attention to what he was doing in order to fulfill Agacio's requests. He made a half-hearted attempt at working a spell to pull the moisture from his clothes, but it fizzled away and he just wrung out the worst of the water into one of the Temple's many fountains. As he twisted the cloth he tried to keep from thinking about the vernadi's evening meal happening right now, already dreading the extra kitchen duty he was probably going to get for missing it today.

When he left through the wide front doors of the Temple a gust hit him at once and made him shiver in his wet clothes. Clots of cloud marred the sky, driven before the wind, burying the sun on the western horizon. Ral's spirits lifted despite the chill and the cold welcome ahead of him; after the dinner, after his punishment, after whatever else he would endure, he could lie awake and listen to the thunder.

He was right about the evening meal. Ral found the communal gathering hall nearly empty except for the kitchen staff and a few irate cooks who didn't much care for his excuses. After he stayed silent through his scolding and accepted his three-day kitchen duty extension without arguing, though, one of the cooks brought out the food they hadn't ended up serving and Ral left with a full stomach after all. Once he had changed out of his wet Temple clothes into something bland but dry he almost felt decent again. Back out in the courtyard he stayed between tall bushes in the garden and shrank into the shadows. Some part of him felt bruised by the length of the day and he had no energy left to deal with people. He considered finding a place to practice in hopes of staying clear of everyone else, since people tended not to disturb him when he was ankle-deep in homebrew hail. But the day's exercises had more than worn him out and the thought of drawing any more mana still made him feel exhausted.

Instead he dodged from the garden to one of the slender spiraling staircases that anchored the corners of the building, hurrying up the steps lest he run into someone else. One thing Ral would give the vernadi credit for: it had the nicest roof he'd ever visited. At Silverthorn the rooftop gardens overflowed with creeping vines and flowers and big bushes in pots, everything that drank up the sun and didn't mind the wind and rain. He trudged along the white gravel paths till he found a stout bush that looked wide enough to conceal him for a while and slumped beneath it. He leaned back against its heavy pot, breathing in the scent of the flowering vine that twined through its the leaves. Above him branches cut black silhouettes against the wild grey-painted sky. The clouds grumbled lightly overhead and he sighed, letting go of the day's tension, drifting away from the little world that hummed away beneath him.

He had expected to miss his home. He had expected that he wouldn't belong. But as the weeks of his sojourn in the vernadi passed Ral had caught a deeper, odder fear gnawing at the back of his mind: what if he _did?_ He hadn't been lying when he'd told Sadie that the Temple wasn't his home, but it still shaped the structure of his life. He could love it, he could hate it, but he could never excise it entirely from his self - or so he had believed. But what if a year from now he had forgotten it all, become a good little Selesnyan child who never talked back and never did anything strange and never veered from the course laid out for him? Ral was stubborn, he knew that. He cherished that, no matter how much others seemed to think it was a flaw. When he said he would do something, he did it. When he said he wouldn't, he didn't. He took pride in the strength of will to keep to his own decisions.

But what if he weren't stubborn _enough?_ What if they managed to break him, and take away everything that made him _him,_ and made him just like everyone else?

 _"Get up!"_ someone yelled just behind him. Ral lurched to his feet and nearly fell forward closer to the roof's edge than he might have liked. He staggered for a moment, turning round, getting the bush in its heavy pot to his back. When he regained his footing and looked across the white graveled path he wasn't too surprised to see Gwyn.

"Go away," said Ral. "I don't want to talk to you today."

Two others moved out from behind the potted trees on the other side of the path. Ral recognized them as the kids who had always stuck closest to Gwyn, followed his lead to the bitter end.

"I know it was you, rain mage," spat Gwyn as his comrades took up stations off to Ral's left and right.

"Not sure what you're talking about," he said with a shrug.

Gwyn stalked forward across the roof till only a meter of gravel separated them. "You killed the blue juniper tree," he hissed. "It was a hundred and seven years old. The vernadi trusted it to me. And you _killed it."_

Guilt flared in Ral's gut. He'd just wanted to get Gwyn in trouble. Had he really killed the beautiful little _pensai_ tree? But he smothered the thought and feigned exaggerated surprise.

"Now that you mention it..." He trailed off, smiled.

Gwyn clenched his fists. "Apologize," he ordered.

"Go lick a goblin's asshole," suggested Ral.

Gwyn's expression condensed into utter fury and Ral's mind raced. _You should find an adult,_ Erika had said. Well, there certainly weren't any adults up here. _Find a quiet place and ignore him._ The sheer drop on three sides of him argued against that course of action. The sky rumbled above him and the cool shadow of incoming rain brushed against his mind.

"Stop it!" yelled a high voice from behind Gwyn. Both of them looked towards its source as Sadie pelted along the white gravel towards them.

"Sadie?" The sight of his sister took Gwyn aback. "Go away, this isn't about you."

She skidded to a stop on the gravel a few feet away. "I knew you'd do something dumb because of your dumb tree," she said, trying to catch her breath. "You're going to get in big trouble and you're going to get me and mom in trouble too. And Kettrick and Laryn," she added as she saw Gwyn's companions. They shuffled uncomfortably. "Leave Ral alone."

"You don't understand," Gwyn told his sister. "People like him are dangerous."

"He is _not!_ And a tree's not worth fighting over!"

"He has to learn his place," continued Gwyn as if she hadn't spoken. "This is what's better for all of us. It's to keep you safe. It's to keep all of us safe."

Sadie planted her hands on her hips. "You've been saying weird stuff ever since you came back from Speaking Wood. This whole thing is stupid!"

"I have a duty to protect my home," snarled Gwyn.

"Mat'Selesnya, you're a woodshaper, not a wolf-rider! Stop acting like this!" In her voice rose an edge he'd never heard before, a shrill note of genuine fear.

"Listen to your sister, alright? Just go away," said Ral.

Gwyn whipped around as if Ral had struck him. "I'd never back down from a coward like you," he sneered. He reached inside his day-clothes and produced a length of wood fashioned into a stout club. Ral's eyes widened and a faint chill flickered in his gut. Nobody had said anything about _weapons._

"Cut it _out!"_ yelled Sadie. She lunged forward and grabbed her brother's arm, yanking at the club. Gwyn staggered in surprise. Ral's eyes darted between the two of them, looking for a chance to run, looking for a chance to seize the club himself - but the older boy planted his feet and shook his sister off, and Sadie landed hard in the gravel; before she could make another move one of the other kids had her by the shoulders, her arms pinned behind her back.

Gwyn stood, resettling his grip on the club. "I'm sorry, Sadie. I know you like him. But this is what's best for everyone. You can't let your own feelings get in the way like that." He turned away from his sister. "You'll understand when you're older."

Gwyn brandished his weapon and took a slow, deliberate step forward. Ral backed up as the first threads of real fear chilled his blood. From somewhere to his left he heard Sadie screaming at her brother. Gwyn would have made the club himself. It would be dense and thick and heavy, and it - it was going to _hurt,_ and this wasn't supposed to happen. After his subtle retaliations Gwyn should have understood that Ral was not to be trifled with. But now the boy carried his club with an easy tension, eager to take a swing, and Ral could no longer ignore the fact that he might have misjudged the situation.

Wind gusted. The first ice-cold drops of rain stung his face. "You're making a mistake," tried Ral.

"The only mistake I made was waiting this long," said Gwyn, and the calm in his tone frightened Ral far more than his earlier rage. "Take her downstairs," he ordered, and Ral heard more than saw his sidekicks wrestling a furious Sadie back towards the stairs. She sounded like she was giving as good as she got, but Gwyn never looked away from his quarry. Instead he advanced again and Ral moved slowly backwards, holding up his hands. The rooftop's edge yawned perilously close behind him and all at once his treacherous mind asked if the unexpected weapon were truly the worst of his problems. After all, who would ask questions if the Zarek boy - who was always doing strange things, who always went off on his own - if the Zarek boy went up on the roof during a storm and happened to slip and fall?

Gwyn's club came to rest just in front of his neck, beneath his chin.

It was an awfully long drop.

The club rose a fraction, nudging his jaw upwards, the dense wood slick and cold. All around him rose a great stirring and rustling of leaves as the rain began to beat down in earnest. Ral held his gaze and reached in a last desperate resort for bright loops of mana, but his weary concentration fizzled and they dissolved in his grip. This was going to be painful, he began to realize. Very painful. He would be lucky if he escaped with only a few bones broken. Fear surged within him and he hoped it didn't show in his face.

"Apologize," ordered Gwyn softly.

For a moment the choice wavered before him.

He could. He could apologize. He could bend and give Gwyn what he wanted. Stop this fight. Defer to this boy who clearly needed to dominate the group, who was willing to get violent to keep that status. Preserve - preserve _harmony,_ the way a good Selesnyan would. And no one would get hurt, most importantly him.

He could give in.

_No._

The word burnt up from the spark of his light and fear charred away in its wake. _No._ It smashed through him like thunder. He had tried so hard to follow the rules, to be what his parents and his instructors and his foster-home wanted him to be. He had swallowed his anger and endured their insults and resolved again and again to find a way to make things right. He had tried so hard to be something he wasn't. And this was where it had led him.

"No," whispered Ral.

Gwyn's look hardened into cold conviction. "Then I'll get rid of you." The club jerked again at his neck, cracking against his jaw. The old caged fury ripped up through Ral and kept going and he let it rise, let it sublime into something brilliant and infinitely larger. Strength flooded out through his limbs. The hair on the back of his neck rose and he smelled something sharp and bright winding through the rain.

"You don't understand beauty," continued Gwyn. "All your kind do is kill things and break things and ruin things. You're a heretic and you don't belong in our home."

For the first time in his life the light in Ral's mind had struck a center deep within, a fixed point, a refracting prism at the core of what it was to be _Ral Zarek,_ and it sparked and brightened till he thought it would sear his skull from the inside out. He heard, as if from a great distance, a high and rising tone, a razor-sharp melody that took the chants he knew and soared up and up and up. His mind raced with a new ferocity. He felt as if he'd been wading through sand and suddenly found solid ground. He felt how he did when he made it up to the rooftop and took his first breath of free air.

"Leave me alone," he growled. The storm echoed his words in coarse thunder. "I won't ask again."

For the first time in his life he felt _power._

Gwyn pressed the club against his throat. "Our family's better off without you. You're dead wood that needs to be cut away."

Thunder cracked loud enough to deafen and in the space of Gwyn's surprise Ral darted sideways faster than thought, slapping the club aside with one hand and grabbing Gwyn's tunic with the other. Gwyn struggled for a moment in confusion and it was the simplest thing then to reach out and grasp the stuff of the world itself and call in the absolute certainty of being answered. Ral yanked Gwyn's face up to his own and saw his enemy's eyes widen.

"You have no idea what I am," he whispered.

And there was light.


	4. Born Classified

The light curled around Ral, warm and alive, and he welcomed it. Brilliance flowed in with each breath and spread shining tendrils through his blood. Every cell of his body drank it in. He felt whole. He felt awake. He felt _strong._

The warmth flickered, and he heard voices.

_"Are you sure? Can you really be certain?"_

Some part of his mind put names to the voices, but they meant nothing. He searched his memory as if examining a stranger's bedroom, turning each object over, wondering what it meant.

_"If it scars, then we'll know."_

_"But...?"_

_"But I think we already have our answer."_

He towered over the world, he had icewater in his veins and thunder in his mind and incandescence in his heart; overwhelming, annihilating, _his._ It loved him, wrapped him up, pulsed through him sharp and fresh and bright. It blazed in his chest, in his soul.

_"Vitu-Ghazi's sending lifeweavers. They think they might be able to save the tree."_

_"That's good. That's... At least that's something."_

And he woke.

Ral let himself doze for a few more minutes, lying loose and relaxed. He must have been asleep, but he didn't feel tired. When he opened his eyes at last, though, he blinked in surprise at the unexpected ceiling. He was in his room - _his_ room, back home. All his clothes had been taken off the floor and some of the objects on his shelves shoved into corners. Multiple pillows propped him up and blanket after blanket had been piled on the bed. Someone had also dressed him in thick pajamas from head to toe; Ral was already starting to sweat. He reached out to throw the covers aside, but the instant he moved pain sounded clear in his left arm and he froze, gritting his teeth till it subsided. Then he drew the offending limb slowly from beneath the blanket. His entire left arm had been wrapped in white bandages, all the way from his shoulder to his fingertips. He laid his right hand gently atop the cotton and a slow slick of pain spread out from the touch. He removed the pressure. Alright. He was definitely hurt.

 _How_ had he gotten hurt, though? Ral sat up in increments, holding his wounded arm. He reached back through his memory and found the vernadi, a long day - a rooftop - Gwyn - Gwyn had found him. Gwyn Silverthorn, who was Woodshaper Erika's son. Who was going to be a woodshaper himself one day. Ral's brain reported these facts with calm objectivity; he found no emotion attached to any of it. Gwyn.

Gwyn had been furious with him. Gwyn had been on the rooftop. Gwyn had a weapon, and then-- Well, the weapon probably explained the injury, and Ral had - oh, it was the tree, wasn't it? He'd killed a _pensai_ tree, which he regretted, to get revenge on Gwyn, which he did not regret. Ral traced a mental finger along these events as if he were reading a page in a novel. And then they were on the rooftop, and then-- And then he'd woken up here.

Ral shoved more blankets away with his right hand and swung his legs around to sit on the edge of the bed. Did he feel like standing up? To his surprise - although he could not have said why he was surprised - he did. Apart from his left arm he felt fine. He felt better than fine, in fact. He felt more awake than he had in a long time.

Ral left his room and walked the few steps to the head of the stairs down, then paused. Voices drifted from below, murmuring over the clatter of plates and cups. Too loud for just his parents and his brother. He waited quietly, stretching his hearing, but he couldn't make out any of what was being said. Oh well. There would only be one way to find out. He descended the stairs carefully, holding his bandaged arm stiff by his side, and followed the noise to the doorway of the sitting room across from the kitchen.

The instant he appeared the voices stopped. His mother and father both looked up from their seats around the coffee table, and so did a number of other people, one of whom was shockingly familiar. "Mother Sonja," he said, taken aback.

The Eighth District Temple Mother set down her cup of tea and smiled at him. He remembered that smile from trying to stay awake through dozens of boring Temple ceremonies. He'd never expected it to appear in his apartment.

His mother was already halfway across the blue-carpeted floor before he looked away and she quickly blocked his view of the rest of the room. "Ral, how are you feeling?" she said hastily, checking his forehead and the back of his neck without waiting for a reply. "Are you cold? Are you ill?"

Ral tried in vain to bat her hands away. "Ma. Ma, stop it. I'm fine. Except my arm hurts."

"Oh, my dear," said his mother in a rough voice and pulled him into an embrace. Ral didn't object, not even when she squeezed him tight enough to make his arm hurt again. She let him go, knelt, studied his face. The lines had come back at the corners of her eyes. "Oh, thank Tanit, you're getting your color back."

"Is something wrong?" said Ral, a note of uncertainty finally entering his voice. He looked past his mother to the other people sitting in the room. It wasn't just Mother Sonja, he realized; Honored Mage Kavich was there too, and Priest Romanova the archive-keeper, and two others wearing Temple robes with sigils he didn't know. And they were all looking at him. And Jaromir wasn't there, which meant he'd been sent to stay with Auntie Danika again.

His father cleared his throat. "Nothing's wrong, Ral. But we need to talk to you."

His mother silently gave him another quick squeeze and let go. She sat at the end of the long spring-green couch and shuffled a little to the left, squashing her neighbor but making a slice of room for Ral to sit down too. He did, still casting wary glances at the gathered adults.

They were all looking at the Temple Mother, and she spoke first. "Ral, can you tell us what you remember of the accident?"

"Accident?" repeated Ral, puzzled.

"Ah--" Mother Sonja fumbled her words for a moment. "Why don't you tell us, ah, the last thing you recall? Before today?"

"Okay," said Ral slowly. He had the distinct sense of entering dangerous territory. He didn't know this situation; he didn't know what was going to get him in trouble and what wasn't. "I was at Silverthorn," he said. No frowns of disapproval. In fact the entire group hung on his words. It was an odd feeling. "I was... I stayed late at the Temple." Yes, that fit together. "When I came back it was going to storm. I went up to the roof to watch." White gravel pathways dotted dark with rain. "I think..." He frowned. "Gwyn was there. He was angry at me, about the _pensai_ tree." Another image suddenly clicked into place and he sat up straighter. "And Sadie! Sadie was there too."

He lapsed into silence. "And then?" pressed Mother Sonja gently.

"And then..." Rain. Wind. Fear. Nothing. Ral tried to shrug but the pain in his shoulder stopped him short. "I don't know. We probably had a fight. I can't remember. That's weird, isn't it? I guess Gwyn hit me pretty hard," he added. Maybe Gwyn was in trouble too.

His mother took his hands in hers. "I need you to think, my dear."

Ral closed his eyes and plunged again into the murky waters of his recollection. "Gwyn had a weapon," he said suddenly. "Sade tried to stop him. He was mad at me because I killed the little tree." Wait, was he supposed to say that? Too late now. "He was..." Thunder growled in his mind. "The storm came..." Slick wood beneath his chin, a moment of pain, fog. HIs mother pressed his hands between her own. He fought through the shadows of memory.

And then his eyes snapped open wide. "Gwyn was going to hit me," he said. The room had gone dead silent. "So I hit him. Only I..." His expression drifted into rapt confusion. "I think I hit him with the _storm."_

Mother Sonja let out a breath. His mother squeezed his hands again between her own, then let go, though she left one hand resting on his knee. Ral stared at the assembled faces, frowning, searching their expressions for any sort of clue. "But that doesn't make any sense, does it?" he asked. "What happened to me? How did I get hurt?"

"Natalka, Alexei, if you would give us a moment," said Mother Sonja, addressing the others. His father stood and after a moment his mother followed suit; there came a general rustling as the rest of the adults got up as well and filed out of the room behind his father. His mother ruffled his hair and whispered, "It'll be alright," and then she too was gone, and the sitting room door had closed for the first time in his memory.

Mother Sonja came over to sit on the couch. Ral scooted back towards the other end. "What's going on?" he asked again. "How did I get hurt?"

Instead of answering she said, "You know the trifold aspect of our lady Tanit."

"Tanit of the Rains, Tanit of the Open Waters, Tanit of the Gentle Sun," repeated Ral, the words coming to his lips without conscious thought.

The Temple Mother nodded. "The three faces of Tanit are the three blessings of the world. Tanit of the Rains gives us harmony, vitality, strength. Tanit of the Open Waters flows in ceaseless change and hides mysteries in her depths. Tanit of the Gentle Sun rules the time to plant and the time to reap, gives us the precepts by which we may order ourselves and our families."

"I thought we were going to talk about what happened."

"Patience, child. All things have many natures. Even our lady Tanit. The rain can nourish the fields, or it can flood a village and drown all those within. There is another side to the goddess. A fourth face." Ral sat utterly still. None of this made sense, but - it was Mother Sonja telling him this. She couldn't be wrong about her own Temple. "This principle is named ba'al. It represents the chaos within us all. Ba'al is uncontrolled. Ba'al disrupts, upsets, destroys."

"What does any of this have to do with _me?"_

"Because you have been given a very special gift, Ral Zarek." Mother Sonja paused, strangely tentative. "You are a storm mage."

Ral's brows knit together in confusion. "But - of course. So's Ma. That's why I have to do mage lessons."

Mother Sonja's mouth opened a few times. She seemed to be trying to think of something to say. "It's not quite that simple, I'm afraid," she said at last. "Your mother is a rain mage."

"Yes?"

"And you are a _storm_ mage, Ral."

"Aren't they the same thing?"

Mother Sonja sighed and reached for her cup of tea. "Not at all the same, Ral," she said. She sounded exhausted. "Not at all."

A strange fear took root in his stomach. Sigils and questions and strangers in his home-- "What did I do on the roof?" he demanded. "What happened to me?"

Mother Sonja nodded towards his left arm. "Take off your bandage, and you'll see."

Ral gave her a perplexed look, but she said, "Go on," and his fingers fumbled open the pin that secured the bandage at his shoulder. As it unwound the cloth scraped his tender skin and set a dull ache throbbing in his bones. At last he stretched his naked arm out and stared at it in slow amazement.

A long red-white mark rippled all the way down his left arm from his shoulder to the tip of his index finger. Scar tissue cut through the olive tan of his skin like an old burn, already halfway healed. He traced it in rapt fascination. The pale wound spiraled around his arm and as it went it split and branched out like a fern in the vernadi garden, like a feather, like - a bolt of lightning etched into his skin. The stinging pain he had felt upon waking now concentrated in that raised line.

"You are a storm mage," repeated Mother Sonja. He heard her like she was talking down a well, still staring at the new scar. "You are marked by _ba'al,_ the principle of chaos. You called the lightning, Ral Zarek. And it answered."

Ral lowered his arm and looked back at her at last. The worry in his stomach was giving way rapidly to a building excitement. "You mean... I can control _lightning?_ I can control..." He trailed off, his mind tracing that sting along his skin. Suddenly it didn't feel like pain. It felt like a reminder, like a promise.

" 'Control' is the key word, young man. Storm mages are rare, but there are others in the Temple. One of them has come all the way to the Eighth to become your new Instructor in magecraft. I'm sorry to disrupt your training this way, but it's for the best. And you'll still go to your book-lessons as well."

"Of course," said Ral. He could barely leash his excitement. He felt like electrical arcs were already sparking within his head.

"Ral." The Mother's face had gone flat and serious. Ral tried desperately to mimic her solemn expression. "A power like the one you hold is not a toy. It is not a gift. It is the touch of destruction, and it's very dangerous. To you most of all."

"Yes," he said, when it became clear that some response was expected of him. "I understand."

Mother Sonja stood. "You will meet your new Instructor at the Temple tomorrow at nine bells. May blessings flow upon you."

"Blessings flow upon you, Mother," he replied on automatic.

She hesitated for a moment, thinking something over. "I'm afraid your new lessons are going to be quite rigorous, Ral. I wish you good luck."

"That's all right," said Ral. His mind raced through towering stormclouds. "I'm ready."

 

* * *

 

Ral woke before dawn. Excitement bubbled in his chest and he could hardly dress fast enough. His mood stumbled slightly when he went looking for his leather satchel and realized it was still stashed in his little hiding place near Silverthorn, but even the idea of having to walk all the way back over there couldn't dampen his spirits. Instead he rummaged through the debris on his floor and came up with an interesting bit of steel scrap to put in the inner pocket of his vest. In the tiny washroom he took a rare moment to check over his appearance in the mirror by the dim grey light. He tugged down the hem of his tunic, tried to smooth out a wrinkle, then frowned at his hair. Was it worth an attempt? Ral flattened it down with one hand and took a few swipes at it with a comb, but it was a losing battle and he knew it. As he set the comb down, though, he caught a flash of something out of the corner of his eye.

He leaned in towards the mirror and combed back the hair on the right side of his head. It had to be a trick of the light - but... He pressed the hair against his scalp. A patch just above his ear had bleached to grey; the roots were pure white. He stared in disbelief. He was ten. He could not have _grey hair._

When Ral went down to the kitchen it was early enough that his father was still awake, dressed in his work uniform and finishing the kugel that his mother had left in the oven before she'd gone to bed. The bits of red and blue cloth tied around his upper arm drooped, damp with water and oil. A risky bluff, but a claim of Guild protection would at least make a Golgari scavenger think twice, and that was better than nothing.

Ral hesitated in the doorframe, not wanting to interrupt. But his father looked up, set down his fork, and said, "You're awake early."

"I've got new lessons," said Ral, moving into the kitchen. He found a clean glass in the cabinet and filled it with water from the tap.

"That's right. They start today, don't they."

"Yes."

His father nodded and went back to the meal in front of him. Ral silently scavenged through the pantry, came up with bread and cheese and a thin slice of preserved meat. Behind him he heard the sound of his father rinsing off the dishes, putting them in the sink. Then a heavy hand dropped onto his shoulder and he stiffened in surprise. His father looked down at him.

"This training is going to help you, Ral," he said quietly. "It'll teach you control."

"I know," said Ral, puzzled.

"Hmm." His father patted him on the shoulder, once, then released him.

The city greeted the dawn with the raucous joy of a reveler who'd been awake all night. As he moved through the streets Ral saw dozens of others on the night shift like his father returning home, or else pocketing their pay and heading for the nearest bar. Street vendors paid off the urchins who'd camped out all night to claim their spots, sent them running back out into the alleys as they unloaded their wares. The bakers went to work well before Ral woke up, even today, and the smell of bread and cake and odder things hung thick between the buildings. Brick and stone echoed with a thousand sourceless, formless echoes; shouts and laughter and rattling carriages and grinding machinery and the hiss of venting steam as Ravnica stretched and sank its teeth into another day.

The great bell atop the Temple had barely struck eight when Ral arrived. He pulled open the bronze-chased door in the eastern wall the same way he always did, giving it an extra yank when it stuck the way it always had. But once inside the foyer he hesitated at the center of the mosaic floor. If he turned right, then straight, he'd reach the stuffy classrooms where all the students, mages or otherwise, hacked their way through history and scripture and sums. If he turned left and went down the corridor, then up the stairs, then left again, he would come to the long hall that led to the tiled rooms built for the education of those many mage-students who had yet to master the art of not dumping several liters of rainwater onto the floor. That was where he'd always had his lessons in magecraft, ever since he was six - ever since he was old enough to remember, really. He knew every mosaic in each training area, had silently given them all names, had learned when to show up in order to get one of the two rooms that had real windows and not just slanting skylights. Had fully expected to spend another three years working in one or the other until he passed his initiation and finally convinced his instructors he was not going to get distracted and ruin the carpet.

And now, for the first time in years, he hesitated, uncertain of where to go.

In the end Ral went back up to the practice rooms anyway. Surely Instructor Agacio would think to come looking for him there, and nobody had told him anything else. He was early enough to have his pick of the tiled chambers, and for today's momentous occasion he selected his favorite: the one with the windows and the mosaics of Tanit of the Open Waters ruling in the deep, holding forth the first tome of magic, her flowing robes veiling the hidden world. He sat down on one of the low ledges that ran along the wall, then got up. Sat down somewhere else. Got up again. He paced along the edge of the long rectangular pool that lay beneath the windows, looked at the swirling leviathans painted along its bottom, listened to the burbling of the pipes that connected it to the Temple's channels, its vast internal plumbing system. Sat down again. Okay. Enough. Ral closed his eyes, inhaled, and began the simplest of the meditation exercises he had learned so many years ago. Inch by inch he calmed his racing heart, quieted his thoughts. Drew wisps of mana up from the pool with slow and careful pulls, then released it to settle back into the water.

The Temple bell broke through his concentration. As the ninth chime died away the door to his room opened and Instructor Agacio entered, followed by another man. Ral stood up hastily, tugging down the hem of his tunic.

"I thought I might find you here," said Agacio with an oddly cheerful tone. He gestured to the man next to him. "Student Zarek, this is Skymaster Josef."

Josef gave him a precise nod. Ral stared at the man in awe. A full _Skymaster?_ A mage who had dedicated their life to the mastery of weather magic, who had passed the highest rites the Temple had to offer? This was already going better than he'd hoped.

"The Skymaster is going to take over your practical training from now on," said Agacio.

"All of it?" said Ral in surprise, his gaze returning to his Instructor.

"Yes," said Agacio. "I won't be your tutor anymore, Ral."

"But - you're not leaving the Temple or something, right?"

The Instructor broke into an unexpected smile. "Of course not."

"Okay," said Ral, oddly reassured.

"Skymaster, I leave you to your new charge," said Agacio. He inclined his head to the man, then left.

Ral stared at the Skymaster, who seemed to be assessing his new charge in turn. He wore Temple robes Ral had never seen before, a wide vest and long pants covered by a calf-length skirt split front and back. Patterns of waves and clouds had been embroidered across the rich cloth. Suddenly he remembered his manners, clasped his hands behind his back, dropped his gaze to the floor.

"Student Zarek," said Josef. Ral looked back up. His new tutor gestured towards the door. "Walk with me."

Ral stayed still for another moment, surprised, but soon found himself and the Skymaster walking down the long corridor. Ral wondered which room they were going to move to until he realized they had nearly reached the stairs and Josef hadn't slowed.

"Are we going to practice somewhere else?" he hazarded when they reached the stairwell.

"We will speak when we arrive," said Josef.

They climbed the stairs in silence. Ral hurried to keep up with his new tutor's longer pace. When the Skymaster continued all the way to the top Ral nearly asked what they were planning to do on the level of the Temple that generally handled burial rites, but Josef's expression remained blank and closed and Ral swallowed his curiosity for the moment. Josef turned in the opposite direction and walked all the way down the hall to where the sloped outer wall of the Temple met the floor. He unlocked the ornate door with a key Ral had never seen before, pushed it open, and once again gestured for Ral to precede him.

Ral stepped outside onto a walkway a full twenty stories above street level. The Temple wasn't the tallest building in this neighborhood, but it was the largest. Its square base occupied the entire block and the walls sloped upward towards a high, flat peak. While Ral had been waiting inside the sun had risen above the spiked fence of the horizon and now shone long and bright down the streets, chasing away the last of night's shadows from the sky. He scanned the city below him, around him, above him, trying to take in the sight. Behind him the door slammed shut and he heard Josef relock it from the other side. Then the Skymaster began to climb the wide stairs that led up the angled sides of the Temple, all the way towards the top.

Ral had seen the Sky Court before, of course. He was allowed up there with Instructor Agacio once a year for the chant that called the mage-gifted to the Temple's service, and one day he'd have his initiate rites there as well. But the idea of simply walking up there on a day that was just - _a day,_ not a feast day or a holy day or any sort of celebration - well, it had never occurred to him. But Skymaster Josef ascended to the square stone courtyard at the Temple's peak with no more apprehension than Ral would have shown climbing out onto his own roof.

The Sky Court had been laid the day Tanit's priests had consecrated this particular temple all those centuries ago, and though each fragment of bright blue or green or shining white glass must have been replaced at least once, the immense and beautiful mosaic that formed the Court itself remained the same. Bronze statues of Tanit in her three guises stood to the west and east and north, each holding one hand aloft and touching the stone with the other, while the south side held the Sky Altar proper. Its bright golden bowl glittered in the dawn as it poured forth the waters of the eternal fountain. Gold leaf outlined the thousands of small holes punched into the mosaic to allow the rainwater, made pure by its passage through the statues and the holy sigil, to drain into the cistern beneath the Court. From one corner a slender copper rod rose from the stone, the only part of the Temple allowed to stand higher than the sacred statues: the lightning rod that protected them from the storm's fury, channeled the errant bolts away harmlessly down to the earth.

The Skymaster halted before the altar, waiting for Ral to catch up, then seated himself in one of the meditation poses. Ral followed suit and folded his hands in his lap, waiting for the Skymaster to speak. Josef eyed his posture; Ral shoved his shoulders back another fraction of an inch. Finally the Skymaster said, "Your instructor has taught you meditation?"

"Yes, we--"

"Do not interrupt." Ral closed his mouth and waited. "Your instructor has taught you the Breath disciplines? The control of the essence, and the mind?"

"Yes," said Ral, after making sure the Skymaster was done. "We're on Crown now. I can do clouds, and frost, and sometimes hail, and--"

"Show me the scar."

"The scar?" said Ral, but even as the words left his mouth he knew what Josef was talking about.

"Ba'al's mark," said the Skymaster in the same implacable tones. Ral rolled up his left sleeve. The Skymaster leaned forward and examined the elaborate branching burn, betraying no reaction.

"I see," he said at last, sitting back. Ral rolled his sleeve back down, inexplicably wary. Josef's utter calm was beginning to unnerve him. "The Temple Mother spoke with you."

"Yes. Yesterday."

"Has she begun your education?"

"Well, she told me about the four faces of the goddess, and that - storm mages aren't the same as rain mages, and - that was sort of it." Ral trailed off into silence.

"I see," said Josef again. "You know nothing." Ral bit his lip and clasped his hands together in his lap, forcing himself to stillness.

"The gift of rain magic is the blessing of our lady Tanit, queen of the skies," began the Skymaster. "She reigns in the realm beyond the sun and her waters flow clean and without stain. But this world is fallen and corrupt. Between her throne and our base existence the purity of the goddess is tainted with misery, strife, discord, death. All these are the touch of ba'al, the principle of chaos. Once in a very great while, when our lady Tanit touches the souls of her followers, this ba'al touches them as well. Your sympathy for the lightning springs from this chaos. But this is not the curse it may seem."

Ral's stomach lurched. _Curse?_

"The touch of ba'al is a gift in disguise, a great task given to you alone. You carry a fragment of chaos within your soul, and as you dedicate yourself to the goddess' service, you will also purify that chaos. As you learn control you will transform the corruption of the ba'al into order and harmony, and restore a measure of this fallen world."

"You're going to teach me to control the storm?" said Ral uncertainly.

"I will teach you to control yourself, Ral Zarek. From this day forward you must be the master of your thoughts and your desires, lest they manifest in the shape of the storm's fury. Like the farmer in the fields, you will weed out the chaotic and the impure in your soul, and plant instead that which will grow straight and true. In this way you will restrain the destructive power within you. You will learn to calm yourself, to become whole and ordered, to submit to the will of Tanit."

 _Submit._ The word hit Ral like an arrow in the chest and burnt outwards, hot and cold. His head snapped up. _Submit._

He did not submit. Not to a goddess. Not to _anyone._

No one had that right.

"In time you will learn to work magic without succumbing to this corrupting touch," continued the Skymaster, either unaware of or indifferent to his pupil's distress. "One day, Tanit willing, you will undergo the highest rites of purification, and be freed of the ba'al forever. But this path will be neither easy nor short, and I shall ask of you nothing less than full and unwavering commitment. Do you understand this, Student Zarek?"

"Yes," he said. _No. I don't understand you at all._

"Then we begin with meditation."

Ral closed his eyes, trying to clear his mind; but the beat of his heart only bled away into distant thunder.

 

* * *

 

Skymaster Josef let him leave early, though not without setting Ral a number of mental exercises to be executed flawlessly the following day. Ral trudged home without noticing any of the city around him, locked in a bubble of dark, confused thoughts.

Skymaster Josef had no intention of teaching him how to call storms. He had called Ral's magic a _corruption_. Suddenly the Temple Mother's demeanor from the previous day made much more sense. The lightning scar stung all along his arm. Was it really the touch of chaos? The mark of some...unclean power? It didn't feel like chaos. It felt _pure,_ far more pure than any other magic he'd ever wielded. Even the simple act of manifesting his mists required a degree of concentration and the active use of his abilities. But this - it was simple as raising his arm or taking a deep breath. He already knew what to do. He had always known what to do.

They saw only scorchmarks and slag. They couldn't see the beauty of the arc, taste the splendor of that light. They, in short, did not know what they were talking about.

But his new scar twinged as he walked, and a treacherous voice in his mind whispered, _Wouldn't it explain so much? This is why you can't sit through your lessons, why you're always getting into fights, why no one else ever seems to see what you do._ He was corrupted; had been since birth. _This is why you see the other places in the sky. Because your mind and soul are tainted._ Ral almost laughed at the idea. At last he could put a name to all the things that were wrong with him.

But the Skymaster said it could be controlled. Bound. Purified. He'd always been swift at his lessons; he knew he could do whatever Josef asked of him. And the Temple would take away the things that set him apart, and make him whole and happy.

And the Temple would take away the light that made him _Ral._

Wrapped up in such utter gloom he completely failed to notice the girl sitting on the steps outside his apartment building until he nearly ran into her. He stumbled, banging his shin against the edge of the next stair, and blurted out, "Sadie?"

She stiffened and looked up from the book she was reading, a strange blend of shock and relief chasing itself across her face. Then her eyes narrowed and she settled on anger.

"I-- What are you doing here?" asked Ral. "Are you okay?"

"Go away," she spat.

Ral nearly retreated back down the steps at the ice in her tone. "Sadie, come on."

"I mean it. Maybe my mom wants to talk to your mom, but that doesn't mean I have to talk to you."

"Give me a break. I only woke up yesterday, alright?"

Sadie dropped the book next to her. Pages splayed open across the stone. _"Why,_ Ral? Why would you do that to someone!?"

"I didn't know it was going to happen!" shouted Ral. Windows opened along the building above them to let out curious heads. "I didn't-- I can't--"

"You didn't have to fight!" shouted back Sadie, rising to her feet. Her voice split and broke. "Why wouldn't you just _apologize?"_

"Because he was wrong!" exclaimed Ral, flabbergasted. "How can you be taking his side!?"

"They were just stupid pranks! Nobody deserves what you did!"

"Goddess, look, I'm sorry I got into a fight, okay? I'm sorry I got you and Gwyn into trouble or whatever. But he wouldn't leave me alone!"

"He's blind."

The words hit Ral like a wall of ice. He couldn't parse their meaning, not at first. That sentence couldn't imply what it sounded like. It just...couldn't. "The healers don't know if they'll ever be able to fix it," Sadie went on. "And Kettrick's deaf, and the only reason Laryn's okay is cause she was with me on the stairs. _And_ you killed the tree. You killed the _tree."_

For a few blissful seconds he convinced himself she was lying. But the tear-streaked rage on her face admitted no deception. "I didn't know," he mumbled. "That people got hurt."

"Well now you know," spat Sadie.

"And I didn't mean to kill the tree, I just wanted - I wanted them to think Gwyn made a mistake, and--"

"Not the _pensai_ , idiot. The _vernadi_. The city-tree. The people from Vitu-Ghazi came and they're helping it but it's never going to be the same again. You burnt right through it."

"I didn't know," said Ral faintly.

"Of course you didn't. I bet you didn't even ask." She heaved in a deep, difficult breath, swallowing against the lump in her throat, and her next words somehow hurt worse than any of the ones before. "Gwyn was right about you. You're dangerous."

Ral's expression went blank. A roaring noise filled his ears. "Fine," he hissed. "Fine. Good. You know what? I'm glad your tree caught on fire. And I wish it had burned down. Nobody there ever wanted me and I'm happy I got to leave."

"Well, I'm happy you're gone!"

"Fine!"

"Fine!"

He stormed past her, wrenched open the building's front door, ran all the way up to his family's apartment and up again to his room, past the adults gathered in the sitting room who glanced up with identical shocked expressions, and slammed the door and curled up into a knot beneath the blanket, taking deep breaths until the tumult in his mind began to slow.

 _You're dangerous. You kill things and destroy things and hurt people._ Gwyn _had_ been right. Ral was a threat. A good person wouldn't have broken everything the way Ral had, and utterly ruined all his mother and father's hard work to win them a place in the Selesnyan Conclave in the bargain. But... He scrubbed away water from his eyes. But it wasn't his fault, not really. It was this other thing inside of him that had done that, this thing he would learn to control.

He sniffled and thought again about what Sadie had said, more carefully this time. The _idea_ of it, though. Had he really done all that - blinded Gwyn, and set the roof aflame, and nearly killed the vernadi's great tree? To his shock he found growing alongside his horror and regret an insidious sense of... _satisfaction_. Imagining the scorched tree at the vernadi's heart filled him with shame, but there flickered in one tiny, deep-down corner the most delicious thrill. He had done that. He, Ral Zarek, the boy that no one listened to, the boy at the beck and call of so many others; he was stronger than all of them, he was master of a far greater power than any of them would ever touch. Gwyn had cornered him once. Now nobody could corner him again.

 _No,_ he scolded himself, feeling sick to his stomach. _That's the...the chaos talking. It's not right. You shouldn't feel that way._ What if it weren't Gwyn? He could have hurt his mother or his father or his little brother. Would he feel that same joy even then? Ral curled up even tighter beneath the blankets and began to recite the Skymaster's calming exercises in his head. They would help him, Josef had said. They would teach him not to hurt anyone else again.

They would teach him not to _want_ to.


	5. When Placed In Context

Whoever had smeared the lurid foot-high slurs on the Temple's western wall had done so with little concern for the people who would have to clean them off. And it certainly wasn't fair that Ral's class had gotten assigned to do it even though they'd all finished their regular chores. Still, it meant Ral got to go outside instead of sitting at his desk trying to surreptitiously read his book while his classmates worked through sums he'd figured out a month ago, and that was something.

"I bet it was a Gruul clan," grunted Cousin Timofey as he staggered towards the wall with the heavy bucket of scouring wash. He glanced around himself quickly, but Teacher Lebedev had gone back to supervise their classmates as they mixed and filled the buckets. Even so he lowered his voice when he said, "What colossal _assholes."_

Cousin Stefan laughed from where he stood rinsing paint rollers in the previous wash-bucket. "The Gruul can't spell."

"Maybe they can too," shot back Timofey. "And they still hate us from before the Pact Wars."

"Don't be stupid. They go around murdering and wrecking things and they live like animals."

"They do not," said Ral from his perch halfway up the ladder, nearly three meters off the ground. He hadn't had to fight to get the job of climbing high enough to paint over the scrawled, barely-legible threats once Stefan had rinsed the worst of them off. "Gruul think civilization constrains them. To them, they live in freedom."

"They live in the past," said Stefan. "And how would you know, anyway?"

"Because I read, idiot," said Ral.

Timofey dropped the bucket in front of Stefan; its contents sloshed over the rim and Stefan jumped back with a yelp. Ral snickered. Stefan glared at him and flicked a finger. A thin stream of water shot up out of the bucket and Ral barely managed to swat it away in time. Stefan threw another, and another, till Ral caught one in his palm and threw it back ice-cold. Stefan squalled in outrage as it soaked the front of his clothes and flung his arms, sending the entire contents of the bucket hurtling towards Ral. Ral's eyes widened and he ducked sideways and off the ladder, remembering just in time to catch enough wind to cushion his fall. The wall of water and lime splashed across the plastered stone and Stefan's eyes followed it; Ral took the opening to dash across and tackle his cousin to the ground. Stefan yelled for his brother but Timofey was busy laughing himself sick somewhere off to the side. Stefan grunted, managed to free his hands, and tried to get his assailant into a headlock, trying to make use of the height he'd been gaining over the last year; but they'd been tussling since they were four and Ral knew all his weaknesses. He squirmed under Stefan's arm and dug an elbow in just below his ribs. Stefan _whoomph_ ed and his grip slackened as all the air went out of him, but then he got a foot up to his chest and shoved Ral away. Ral rolled back to his feet and braced himself as Stefan got up--

 _"Student Zarek!"_ shouted a shrill adult voice behind him. Cousin Timofey stopped laughing. All three looked up guiltily to find Teacher Lebedev staring at them in shock. Timofey cleared his throat. "Sorry, Teacher," he mumbled. Stefan brushed himself off and muttered something as well. But the Teacher didn't even acknowledge them; her eyes were fastened entirely on Ral, and she didn't speak for a long moment. The perfunctory apology died in Ral's throat and he swallowed sharply.

"Sorry for fighting," repeated Stefan, slightly louder. He looked as confused as Ral felt at their teacher's silence. This was the part where she told them all to mind themselves in Tanit's sight, threatened to tell their respective parents, and maybe gave them extra homework if the scuffle had been particularly loud. But now Ral's instructor was looking at him like - like he was some kind of poisonous insect, a scorpion threatening to sting.

"Student Zarek," she finally said in a thin, strained voice. "The Temple understands about your condition. But a natural inclination towards violence does not relieve you of your responsibility to control it."

"What?" said Ral, genuinely baffled.

"We were just messing around, Teacher," chimed in Timofey. "Stefan started it." Stefan glowered at him but didn't contest this, and that made Ral even more uncomfortable. Some invisible pendulum had swung around, something had placed Teacher Lebedev on one side and Ral on the other, and his cousins unconsciously closed ranks. "We're sorry about the wall. We'll finish the painting."

"It was just water," added Stefan. "And Ral jumped off the ladder, but he's fine. Nobody's hurt or anything."

But the Teacher's bizarrely grave demeanor persisted. "You could have caused a great deal of harm," she scolded Ral. "Your irresponsibility could have severely injured your cousins. I hope you'll think again before you engage in such violence in the future."

"Um?" said Ral.

"And I will be warning your instructor about your loss of control," she added, and Ral's stomach lurched as a dark possibility entered his mind. She couldn't have been worried about-- did she really think that he might have--

"You are excused from class for the rest of the day," said the Teacher. Her voice had begun to shake, just a bit. Timofey and Stefan's faces contorted into identical expressions of shock and envy. Ral felt nothing worth envying. "You will report to your instructor for the appropriate..." She seemed to be hunting for words. "...Treatment," she said at last. "Do you understand?"

"Yes, Teacher Lebedev," said Ral on automatic. His cousins echoed the words, but their teacher still seemed deaf to their voices, instead still watching Ral with that look of mingled worry and - was that-- could that be-- fear?

When she finally turned and left, Ral swallowed past the sudden lump in his throat and forced an unconcerned expression onto his face. "Guess you get to climb the ladder now, Timofey," he said as he stripped off his work-apron.

"What just happened?" said Timofey.

"Was she talking about..." Stefan pointed to Ral's arm.

"What? Oh, probably," said Ral. "I guess she thought I might use a spark-spell or something."

"Yeah, but...you wouldn't," said Stefan.

"Are you gonna get in trouble with the Skymaster?" said Timofey.

"Maybe." _Definitely._ A bare two months of tutelage had been plenty long enough for him to learn the Skymaster's policy on punishments.

"She shouldn't get you in trouble with him," said Stefan. "Not just for fighting."

Ral shrugged. The mask of casual indifference sat easier the longer he worked at it; he could almost convince himself that that was how he'd felt from the beginning, if it weren't for the strange winding tension deep in his chest. "It doesn't matter to me. But I get to get out of class, so whatever. I'm sick of sums anyway. It's not like I don't know them all."

"I guess," said Stefan, still sounding wary.

"Hit Iosefka's for piroshki after?" said Timofey.

"Nah, I don't know when I'll get out," said Ral. He wadded up his paint-splashed apron and chucked it at Stefan. "You guys go without me. Have fun." He felt his face twisting on the last syllable and turned away before either of his cousins could see his expression.

"See you later!" called Timofey after him. Ral didn't look back.

 

* * *

 

He was right about Josef. The Skymaster didn't permit his charge to leave until well after the sun had set and the Temple bells had rung for evening chant. Ral rubbed at one eye as he pushed open the door to his family's apartment and headed straight for the kitchen. The relative silence in the building told him he'd missed dinner, but his mother had left his plate tucked inside the oven next to his father's meal to keep it warm. Ral found a fork and carried the potato kugel upstairs to his own room, flopping down on his bed to eat. As his stomach ceased its complaining, though, the rest of his body began to register its misery. All his joints ached. He hadn't done Root disciplines since Instructor Agacio had figured out that yes, Ral would continue peppering him with questions even when trying a handstand, and no, Ral would not get tired before his Instructor did. Root was easily the most boring of the three mage-disciplines and Ral had bolted through its foundations as quickly as he could. But today Josef had listened to the sullen explanation for his early arrival without blinking and then set him one of the physical exercises Ral hadn't seen in years. Ral didn't bother to ask for an explanation. Instead he'd tried to focus all the pent-up energy from the aborted fight into the intricate, prescribed motions, and for a little while it had even helped. But then the comforting bit of scrap steel had fallen out of his pocket and earned him a thorough interrogation, and Josef had taken it. Now as he lay sprawled on top of the blanket that weird tension coiled again in his chest, burned in his throat, a serpent rising from the base of his spine.

It wasn't the fight and it wasn't the metal - well, it was, but - but for the past two months his new tutor had set him nothing but Breath disciplines that Ral had mastered long ago, except that now nothing he did seemed to pass muster. The first five memory-chants, simple rhythms Ral had learned at age six, required a week of repetition before Josef deemed them satisfactory, and by then Ral had given up entirely on understanding what the Skymaster wanted and how he had failed to live up to it. It hurt. It hurt his mind, strained his eyes and his throat, left him utterly drained. Yesterday his mother had had to shake him awake for dinner and it hadn't even been the first time this week. And now the Root disciplines had exhausted his body as well. All in vain pursuit of some ideal only Josef could see.

Ral put the clean plate on the floor next to his bed and began to empty his pockets, hesitating when he found the space where his scrap steel had been. He closed his fingers into a fist and felt that sharp-edged pull. What right did Josef have to confiscate his possessions, to interrogate him as to their purpose - to force him into endless repetitions of skills he'd mastered long ago? To call Ral's efforts _not good enough!?_ He was better than that - better than any of the other students, quicker than the Instructors, long past these simple and inane exercises - and Josef just wouldn't _see_ it!

Pain lanced across his palm and a sharp scent of lightning bit through his rage. Ral pulled in a deep breath and counted heartbeats until the crackle in the air dissipated and his anger retreated to settle within him like a low fog. He deliberately unclenched his hand, examining the red crescents where his nails had dug into the skin. Eventually his tutor would have to return to Crown disciplines. All of the tedium Ral had to endure now was only preparation so that he could begin his new mage-exercises with a firmer foundation. By then Josef would understand that Ral was different, that he shouldn't be treated like a child, like the rest of them. And then - he would taste wind and rain and lightning.

Eventually.

 

* * *

 

"What'd you get?" said Ivanna.

"Seventy percent," said Stefan smugly.

Ivanna groaned and swiped an arm across the crumpled sheet of paper on the table in front of her, still trying to flatten it out. "That can't have been the class average. I'm screwed if it is."

"I got sixty-six. And Palka said she had seventy-one," volunteered Timofey. Ivanna's look of despair only deepened.

"Let me see what you did," said Stefan, taking Ivanna's test paper and rummaging in his satchel for his own.

Timofey took another enormous bite of his meat pie and mumbled, "Rah, wha yu geff?"

"That's not fair, Ral doesn't count," cut in Ivanna.

Ral jerked his gaze away from his aimless consideration of the people passing by outside the shop's big front window. "What? I don't count for what?"

"You don't count for figuring out the class grade."

Timofey swallowed his mouthful of pie and repeated, "What'd you get?"

"Does it matter?" said Ral.

Stefan flattened his own paper out next to Ivanna's, compared them, and said, "Yeah, I got that one wrong too. Ral, what was the answer to four?"

Ral dropped his empty skewer on the table with a _clang_. "Do we have to talk about the stupid geometry test? It's over. Can we just forget about it?"

"Not really?" said Stefan.

"This is my one afternoon off," growled Ral. "I would rather. Not. Think about class."

Timofey looked taken aback, but Ivanna just tossed her head and slid another slice of grilled bell pepper off her own skewer. "Whatever, we all know you got a perfect score and messed up the average for the rest of us. Ugh. I think it's something about the secant."

Ral picked his skewer back up and balanced it on its point, pressing down on the end of the handle with one finger. He twisted it idly as his attention drifted back to the street outside. Beyond the little café carriages rattled and carts shoved each other for position in the middle of the street while a continual stream of foot traffic did their best to avoid them. Distant islands of cloud caught the sun in shades of lavender and cream. Fairweather cumulus; it would be a clear afternoon. A spindly shadow moved across the window as an insectile Golgari walker picked its way through the crowd. Ral followed the undulating progress of its spade-shaped body, raised higher than the café's red-striped awning.

"What're you looking at?" broke in Stefan. Ral once again yanked his attention back to the café. He shrugged minutely and said, "There's another of those Golgari walkers out today."

"So?"

"So there's been a lot of them around. That's kind of weird."

 _"You're_ kind of weird," said Timofey.

"Yeah? So what?" said Ral. His shoulders tensed.

"So you're weird and it's weird," said Timofey.

"What's wrong with that?"

"Because it's _weird,"_ declared Timofey. "What are you even arguing about?"

"I just think it's strange that there are so many of them around, all right?" said Ral. "What are they all carrying? Where are they all going? What are they going to do when they get there?"

"You could go ask," suggested Ivanna.

"I don't think Ral speaks Bug," said Stefan.

"What if it's some kind of Guild thing?" mused Ral aloud. "What if the Golgari are going to - I don't know, like - claim new territory or something? Maybe there's going to be a fight. It could get dangerous."

"Or _maybe_ somebody decided to take the spiders out for a walk," said Stefan. "Come on, Ral, help us with problem four."

"Yeah, can't you pretend to be a normal person for like five minutes?" said Timofey.

Ral lifted his finger and let the skewer clatter back to the table. "Not really, no."

"Ral--" began Stefan, but his cousin cut him off sharply. "Sorry I pay attention to shit that isn't grades. If _you_ count as normal then I'd definitely rather be weird."

"Lady's breath, calm down," said Ivanna.

"Why?" snapped Ral. "I'm sick of you being a jerk about everything, Stefan. You're not any better than me."

Stefan looked genuinely baffled. "What? When did I say anything about..."

"Well, you're _not."_ Ral swallowed hard against the unexpected tightness in his throat.

"Okay, Stefan's a moron, everybody knows that," said Ivanna. "Ral, can you _please_ help with problem four? I'll buy you paczki after, I promise."

Ral was already on his feet, shouldering his satchel. "I can't. I have to go anyway."

"What? Why?" asked Timofey.

"I just _do._ I have stuff to do." An idea. "For Temple."

"I thought this was your afternoon off," said Ivanna.

"There's still stuff I have to do, okay? Josef gives me a lot of work." He settled the strap across his shoulder and left before anyone could ask any more questions.

The grinding tumult of the street swallowed Ral up, drowning out his thoughts. His feet aimed him automatically in the direction of home. But at the next intersection he drifted to a halt in the middle of the walk. The moment he stepped inside the door one of his parents would certainly ask him how his day had gone, and then he would have to either lie or deal with the consequences of the truth, and right now he did not have the strength to handle that without snapping and saying something he would regret. Or at least get punished for. Someone shouldered roughly into him from behind, spitting an insult. Ral cursed after the retreating form, but started moving again at a slow, aimless pace as his eyes scanned the horizon.

Ten minutes later he hauled himself up over the arch of a narrow brick buttress, pausing for a moment to heave in a few tired breaths. An increasingly large portion of his brain had begun to point out climbing so far up a strange building was a bad idea; but he was already halfway up, and he certainly wasn't going to give up now. Even so it took him another twenty minutes to finish his ascent of the small apartment block. He'd never been here before but the curling tarpaper expanse of the roof could have been his own. The buildings in this part of the Eighth had all been built around the same time and they all pretty much looked the same, because it hadn't been worth anyone's time to make them different. He found a spot in the shade of some old brick protrusion where the sun's heat didn't lay quite so heavy on the back of his neck, and dropped his satchel, and pulled out a crushed piece of paper.

Geometry was Ral's least favorite sort of math; sometimes he even had to study it before a test. And he _had_ meant to study this time. But he'd been so tired, and his brain crammed full of chants and rhythms and meditations, and he'd just...he'd tried, hadn't he? It had to be because of the night before the test. He'd thought he had it under control when he left the Temple after a long day of unusually and brutally precise exercises, but around midnight the tearing in his gut gave him just enough warning to make it to the sink before he threw up. So that woke Jaro up, and that woke his mother up, and then the entire apartment was awake and his mother was convinced he had influenza and that was about it for Ral getting anything like a decent night's sleep. So he'd been tired during the test. That was all it was. Even in the shade the teacher's red ink writing seemed to flash at him from the page: _45/100. See me tomorrow._

Ral tightened his hands around the edges of the paper.

The arc snapped between his fists almost too fast to see. Ral jerked backwards with a shout and half the paper had already burned before he had the presence of mind to drop it. By the time it fell to the tarpaper it was nothing but black ash crawling with little red embers.

Well. At least that solved the problem of showing it to his parents.

He pressed his back against the brick and huddled up, letting the tears flow silently, till the shadow he hid in had lengthened across the roof and the sun touched the distant horizon. Then he went home and told his mother he had had to stay late at Temple.

 

* * *

 

The Chant of the New Year rang through the Temple's great gathering hall. Ral braced his chin on one hand and tried to keep his eyes open. Being a storm mage marked by a fragment of primordial all-devouring chaos usually meant he got to sit next to his instructor during ceremonies, and a Skymaster merited much nicer accommodations than Ral did. But the New Year was an exception, and here Ral was back down in the middle of the Great Hall on a hard wooden chair in the sea of students. At least he wasn't the only person in his section having trouble paying attention. Ivanna let out a jaw-cracking yawn to his left and only just managed to smother the sound. Ral's own jaw ached in sympathy. Cousin Stefan and Cousin Timofey in the row in front of him had managed to sneak in a pad of paper - Timofey could sneak anything into Temple, sometimes Ral wondered if he'd been studying illusion-magic - and they'd used it to play some complex word game for a full hour. That had kept Ral busy spectating, but Instructor Vyzotis had finally spotted it and confiscated the contraband entertainment. Now Ral blinked heavy lids. No Josef here to frown and force him to concentrate; his mother was off in the eastern choir with the other Temple mages, and his father was back with the laity trying to keep Jaro quiet. Ral pulled the bright embroidery of his prayer shawl a little tighter around his shoulders. The Chant echoed around him in a familiar drone of Tanish syllables. His eyes drifted shut, his concentration flickered, and...

_Black._

_Shining, glittering metal everywhere he looked, slick and black, piercing the burnt sky. Massive spindling architectures made of interlocking knives, roped in flesh, dripping with fluids organic and machine; furnaces grinding beneath the skin of the earth till it burst like a suppurating wound and spilled forth the horrors forged within; the hundreds of gnashing jaws of razor teeth, the flayed and the broken and the reclaimed, and an endless roaring on the horizon, a killing wind that whipped up the dust of the old world, the pitted bones of the black and shining world, and something was screaming--_

It was him.

The sky shredded apart into a sea of faces, gabbling words he couldn't make out. "It's everywhere," he rambled, breathless. "The oil and the metal and the flesh - oh goddess, how it spreads, it _consumes--"_

The faces parted and a familiar expression hovered over him. Josef looked down with a calm pity. Then everything hazed again into distant voices and ceilings and vague worry.

_"Zarek is a bright child, often bored, and fond of novels. Don't read too much into it."_

_"Behavior indicating an unstable mind should be your concern as well. It is of a piece with his other transgressions."_

_"I know Ral is far from the most tractable child, but he has a good heart and a sound mind."_

_"And you have already seen the damage he is capable of inflicting. Do you wish to let such a power go unfettered?"_

_"No, but--"_

_"Do you doubt my experience in this realm?"_

_"The other instructors have never encountered your techniques before."_

_"The other instructors have never encountered a true storm mage before. If this ability is ever to be tamed, the mage himself must be made compliant. Cases such as his are not the subject of common Temple lore. I would not have given up my home and position to become the boy's tutor if it were otherwise."_

And then he blinked, and he was lying on blankets hastily draped over a bench in a room he didn't recognize.

"Student Zarek?" came Josef's voice. "Are you awake?"

Ral blinked again and pushed himself to a sitting position. "I think so," he mumbled, rubbing his forehead. Pain split his skull like cracked glass. All at once the magnitude of what he'd done crashed into him. "Oh, Lady's breath, was I really..."

"Screaming in the Great Hall?" said a dry voice to his right. Ral whipped his head around and his heart plummeted.

"Mother Sonja, I'm sorry, I..."

The Temple Mother only smiled sadly. "It's all right, Ral. I know you didn't mean it, given your condition."

"Of course," said Ral to the blanket that still covered his legs. "That."

"What happened?" asked Mother Sonja.

"It was just a nightmare."

"The touch of chaos can bring on such visions," said Josef. "Their contents can be...illuminating."

Ral reluctantly tried to summon back up the memory of the piercing black. "I saw...It was like a whole world torn apart. Full of machines and shining oil. What does it mean?"

Josef and Mother Sonja shared a look that spiked the worry in Ral's stomach. "It is most likely a warning," said Josef at last. "Perhaps you glimpsed the aftermath of the Pact Wars. Tanit sends you this dire vision to remind you of the consequences of magic unbound."

"Right," muttered Ral to his lap. "I'm sorry I interrupted the ceremony." A horrible thought struck him. "Did my parents--"

"Don't worry. Josef spoke to them," said the Temple Mother. Ral rather thought that might be a reason to worry more, but she went on, "I told them it was the stress of your training, and that you needed to lie down for a bit, that's all."

"Oh." Ral took a deep breath, tidied away the sullen fury, anxiety, fear, and dipped his head towards the Temple Mother. "Thank you."

"As penance you will copy out the Student's Song of the Blue River Scrolls by hand and meditate upon its meaning," declared Josef. "We will resume lessons when you have completed it."

Ral's mouth twisted but he managed not to protest. Well, maybe it was fair. He _had_ disturbed the service, after all; he couldn't expect to go unpunished for that, even if it had just been a nightmare. He stood and nodded again in Mother Sonja's direction. "I really do apologize," he said.

She smiled back, less sadly this time. "No apology is required. For the moment, though, you are excused from New Year celebrations. You may go to the scriptorium now, if you wish to begin your task. I'll let your parents know where to find you."

Ral thanked her and left. As he climbed the stairs towards the wide-windowed scriptorium the vision flickered again through his mind and he gripped the handrail till his fingers creaked. _It isn't real. It's just a nightmare. Nothing that horrible can be real._

Yet when he closed his eyes he still saw that shining black.


	6. Limits

Ral pressed down strands of damp hair and turned his head from side to side, examining it in the mirror for any sign of the pale streaks at his temples. The cheap brown dye had taken two applications to stick and stained his hands in the process, but it took to his hair well enough. He sat back in the chair in front of his mother's vanity. It was a silly idea, really. And he shouldn't have to hide it and it wasn't like everyone at the Temple didn't know what his hair looked like already and it wasn't like he cared, either. But seeing his reflection without the telltale white still brought on a wave of guilty relief.

He grabbed his new ceremonial outfit off his parents' bed and retreated to his room, savoring the privacy as he dressed. A few days ago his mother had warned him that it would only be a little while before Jaromir got old enough to move out of his parents' bedroom, which meant it would probably happen next week, and then Ral would be stuck with his little brother for _years._ He slung the heavy teal robe over his shoulders and settled a stiffly-embroidered vest over top of it, then yanked down the cuffs and sighed. His initiate outfit had only been tailored a few weeks ago but bare skin already showed at his ankles and wrists. He unrolled the wide sash and clutched it in one hand while he used the other to settle a thick paperback book at the small of his back, wrapped in a rag to disguise its outline. He cinched the sash tight and jumped up and down a couple of times to make certain it wouldn't fall out, then cinched the ribbon that closed the mouth of his left sleeve, just to make certain the fabric wouldn't ride up to show his scar.

Ral knew perfectly well by now how to put on the light facial makeup that was all his status as an uninitiated student entitled him to, but his mother insisted that he wasn't allowed to do it himself yet and it was easier just to let her; so he sat with his eyes closed while she applied the faint swirls of blue and green. Today's occasion warranted a hired carriage to the Temple, giving Ral an oddly tall perspective on the streets he walked most mornings. Despite the weeks of rehearsals and preparation for the ceremony a nervous excitement still stirred in his gut at the realization that it was finally _here_. The tall bronze front doors of the Temple stood open today and the atrium's high ceiling echoed the formless murmur of a few hundred voices. At the entrance to the Great Hall his mother stopped him for one last chance to fuss with his robes.

"I knew we should have gotten these cut long," she said, tugging in vain at one sleeve. "Are you sure you remember where you're supposed to go?"

"Ma, yes, we've had rehearsal three times now."

"I know, I know." She hugged him tightly, taking care not to smudge his paint. His father watched over her shoulder with a look of unclouded pride, even though he kept yawning this far in advance of when his day usually began.

His mother let him go. "We'll be down here when you're done." Ral managed to stifle another _Ma, yes, I know_ before he headed for the stairs to the Temple's upper levels.

Ral paused on the stairwell to extract the book and retie his sash. In the Sky Court's antechamber he joined the milling crowd of students trying to find their friends, eating contraband snacks, making last-minute plans for tonight's celebration now that the parents had been shuffled off elsewhere. Here and there instructors tried to corral their particular groups with limited success. Ral located Stefan by dint of holding up the book and waving it around till his cousin found him.

"Hey, you did your hair. It looks good." Stefan sounded surprised.

"Whatever. Ma made me," grumbled Ral.

"You brought it?"

"I said I would, didn't I?" said Ral, shoving the book towards him.

Stefan turned the cheap paperback over and read the back. "That's the first one in the series," added Ral. "Chronologically, I mean, it's the third one that's published. I can get you the rest eventually."

Stefan tucked the book inside his own robes and said, "Fair's fair. Hang on." He extracted a paper bag from an inner pocket and passed it to Ral, who opened it and examined the slightly squashed sweet-cream pirozkhis within.

"Seven?" said Ral, slightly surprised. "How'd you get so many?"

"Told Ma they were for Instructor Vyzotis," said Stefan. "Lying to my mom, I'm going to end up a delinquent like you."

"At least my parents let me read books that don't have all the bad words blacked out," retorted Ral. "Don't leave it under your bed, either, Da always looks there first when he thinks I've got stuff hidden."

Stefan nodded. "See you after?" he asked. "Wait, no, let me guess. You have to go do some special Temple thing."

Ral let out a sound that was half-growl and half-sigh. The corner of his cousin's mouth quirked up, but the expected laughter didn't come.

His business transacted, Ral found a corner where he could sit and discreetly stuff pirozhkis into his face while watching the crowd. Nearly fifty students had qualified for initiation this year, more than anyone in the Eighth had seen in decades. Ral swallowed the last of his second pastry and idly wondered if anyone had made certain there was enough rainwater in the sacred cistern for all of them to do their rites.

"Student Zarek," said Josef from behind him. Ral dropped the third pirozhki back into the bag and stood quickly, brushing crumbs off his robes. "We'll be waiting elsewhere," said the Skymaster.

"We will?" said Ral, surprised. Josef only beckoned him onwards. They left the antechamber for a short back hallway whose blank walls suggested it didn't see much public use, then to a small room not that different from the one he had just left. A statue of Tanit of the Rains burbled quietly to itself in one corner as water streamed down the dark stone face. The humidity made Ral's paint itch. He found a low, cushioned stool and sat on his hands to keep from scratching his face.

When they were both seated the Skymaster said, "Initiation into the Temple mysteries is the first step you take on a lifelong journey." Ral managed not to roll his eyes at the exact sentence he'd heard a dozen times this month alone. "Today your fellow mages will offer up their gifts to our Lady and commit to becoming full mages of the Temple." Josef paused. "You have a different path."

Ral sat forward.

"Tonight you will sit a vigil. This is the exercise known as Lantern. It marks the end of your training in the Breath disciplines, and your preparation for the Crown."

Ral's heart lurched. Finally. Finally he would get to learn real _magic._

"Lantern is the first of four vigils that you will sit through the course of your life. After it comes Arrow, and then Flame, and then the Tempest. At the end of the Tempest rite, you will be made an Honored Mage."

"What are those vigils about?"

"You will learn," said Josef firmly, and Ral knew the subject was closed for the moment. "Now. Tonight, at midnight, you will call forth a spark within one of the great storm-lanterns. You will keep that lantern lit until dawn. You will consider--"

Voices rose suddenly outside the room. Before either Ral or Josef could react a woman flung open the door and declared, "At last, there you are."

Ral bolted to his feet and knocked over his stool in the process, too surprised to make any sort of courtesy. The woman's face was familiar, but-- "Grandmother Marzanna?" he asked in disbelief.

She strode into the room in a swirl of royal blue fabric. Josef had also stood and Ral could see him frowning over her shoulder. "Honored Mage, the boy requires solitude to prepare for his rites--"

"The boy requires his grandmother," snapped Marzanna Zarek, not so much as glancing towards Josef. "You may be his tutor, but you're certainly not his blood. This is family business."

Josef's mouth thinned and he went still for a delicate moment, but then to Ral's secret astonishment he inclined his head a bare fraction and left the room, closing the door behind him. The instant it clicked shut Grandmother Marzanna swept him up in a massive embrace. Ral found himself enveloped by the heavy, rich cloth of her robes.

"You're going to smudge my paint," he tried to say through the fabric.

"Oh, my darling," she said, releasing him immediately. "Would you believe Natalka tried not to tell me it was your time? As if I'd forget my first grandchild's initiation."

"What are you doing here?" asked Ral. Grandmother Marzanna had a little more grey salted through her short black hair now, but her brisk voice and soft blue robes instantly resurrected memories of rich furnishings, lemon tarts, and arguing adults.

"I've come to see another Zarek take his rites. And to see you, of course." She looked him up and down. "So tall! I knew you were going to take after great-uncle Mykhail, you have your nose from that side of the family." She chuckled. "And you have your mage-spark from my branch of it, I hear."

Ral dropped his gaze. The unexpected joy of his visitor drowned in sudden cold. "Ma didn't tell you about my - condition," he muttered to the pale blue carpet.

"Condition?"

"I'm not a rain mage."

"No, you're certainly not." Before Ral could process this Grandmother Marzanna caught his chin in one hand and brushed his hair back from his forehead; Ral tried to duck away but her grip held firm. Golden bracelets rattled on her left wrist. She studied the pale roots beneath the dye at his temples and emitted a wry chuckle. "Thirteen and already gone white as an Izzet," she said, releasing him. "No wonder they're afraid of you, my boy. You could bring this building down around their ears."

Ral gaped and managed to say reflexively, "I would never do something like that."

"Of course not," said his grandmother briskly. "And I'm certain all your fool instructors haven't been walking on spun glass, either, coming face-to-face with genuine power."

Ral blinked. For a moment confusion swallowed the grasping swirl of emotions the subject conjured in him. "I'm learning to control it."

"You're learning to fear it," said his grandmother.

"I don't understand."

"Of course not. I'm an old mage who spends her time playing politics in the Tenth, and I just say silly things, don't I?" She rested both hands on his shoulders. "Like this: you know who you are. Don't forget it."

Hot tears welled up at the corners of his eyes. His guts were doing something he didn't understand. Marzanna was still watching him with steady eyes. All at once an arc of electricity rippled up his spine; Ral clamped down instinctively, hard, turning away towards the door - he had to get away from anyone nearby, anyone who might be hurt--

"Oh, enough of that," said his grandmother sternly, tightening her grip on his shoulders. A cold blanket of mana dropped over him and Ral let it in, let the sparks sizzle away into it. Before he could apologize she embraced him again, wrapping that cooling fog around him, and if the air still smelled of ozone and her robes were slightly damper when she let go, she didn't mention it.

Ral sniffed a few times, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. He found the calm place of his exercises, examined his emotions like the array of items on his mother's dresser, set them in order. Then he found the bag he'd dropped next to the stool.

"Do you want a pirozhki?" he asked. "They've got cream inside."

Grandmother Marzanna smiled and sat down on Josef's abandoned stool. "I would _love_ a pirozhki, my dear."

 

* * *

 

A spark burned in the darkness.

Its flicker within the tall glass column of the storm-lantern left glowing green trails across Ral's vision. He shifted his shoulders, tried to find a more comfortable position on the hard bench, but couldn't ease the ache growing at the base of his spine. In theory he could get up, even walk around, but he didn't want to risk it. Too much of a chance that he'd lose his concentration during the motion and thus lose the spark. And then the delicate streamers of radiance that curled within the storm-lantern would blink out, and the water would drown the metal at the center, and there would be no rekindling the arc, and the five - was it five, now? - the five hours he had spent thus far in a tiny dark room keeping a spark alive would have all been for nothing.

His stomach rumbled and Ral did his best to ignore it. He'd bolted the rest of the pastries before the sun dipped below Ravnica's ill-defined horizon, but he already felt like he hadn't eaten in days. Sitting still in a dark room and concentrating on a single point of light was not, to put it mildly, something Ral had much experience doing. _And this is just Lantern Vigil,_ he thought morosely. Whatever dangers Arrow and Flame and Tempest might involve, he hoped they at least weren't so _boring._

He focused again on the spark, whose name was Tef. After the first hour of deliberation he had settled on the name Netefer, after Nes'Tefer Illuminated, whom not one but three of his favorite novels named as one of the Pact Wars' most powerful mages, at least as measured by blast radius. But after the second hour Ral had to allow that the little flicker he tended wasn't quite big enough to be a Netefer. So it was Tef, and Tef it had stayed for the three - was it four yet? please let it soon be four - hours after that. Ral studied his little bit of light. Tef looked tiny at the center of the storm-lantern's column, but it glowed steady and true. Memory surged up from the back of his brain of that pure, overwhelming rush of power - _No,_ he told himself, squashing it back down. _You can't give in to that._ But Grandmother Marzanna's words kept intruding on his thoughts.

His mother said that Grandmother Marzanna didn't even go to Temple anymore. But she had talked like she knew all about storm magic. There had to be other storm mages in Ravnica, right? Somewhere in the world had to be another soul that heard the lightning calling. That brought his tutor to mind and Ral frowned in the darkness. After three years of careful questions he was no closer to unraveling the mystery of who Josef was and what he wanted with Ral. Was he a storm mage too; or rather, had he been one before the Temple enacted whatever purifying rite had made him a Skymaster? Or something else entirely?

Enough maundering. Ral steadied his gaze and returned his attention to the spell anchoring Tef. In his mind it felt like a pinprick, like the touch of a blunted metal point, and at the same time a single faint but constant note. His thoughts orbited that focus in a confused blur - thinking about not-thinking-about thinking about it - but through it he held on to that simple center. The glowing trails the spark left across his sight resolved into a single point that overlaid the light itself, inverting its colors, making it into a strange mote of bright and dark. His mind was inverting along with Tef, centering around that single fleck of light and expanding outwards. The world seeped into him in a slow-spreading stain of awareness. He traced the soft rush of the vast system of pipes and fountains and cisterns that veined the Temple, carrying water and mana. The stone walls spoke of cold strength, but deep within their structure lingered whispers of the primordial fires beneath the earth. At the peak of the Temple the Sky Court's lightning rod stretched upwards, and the moment his attention touched it it unfurled into hidden depths.

Ral snapped back down, recoiling away from what lay within that copper rod. The past roared awake again - _fire and light and strength and fury_ \- feeding that guilty brilliant flame, and he wavered, torn between two poles - and then the stalemate broke. He set his jaw, a glare at the blind darkness. There was no Skymaster here to tell him what to do, and he was stuck here all night. He deserved a little indulgence.

He reached again towards the lightning rod and woke its memory of storms. In his mind roared the thunder of centuries past, the beating rain and splintered current. It filled him up, spilled over, wiped him clean of anything but the understanding of light and water and air. A flicker in his eyes, his body's eyes, and he recollected himself within the dark room by the storm-lantern's glow. He held his hands shoulder-width apart, framing the glass column. Now faint streamers of light spiraled away from his fingertips, quick and pulsing in time with his heartbeat. He brought his hands closer and the glowing trails bent towards each other till they snapped together into solid arcs burning between his outstretched fingers. He pressed his hands together, then drew them apart, concentrating on his left. Electricity pooled in his palm like boiling water, hissing and crackling. He tipped his hands sideways and relit the arcs between them. Somehow he kept his mind on Tef, on that single spark. Somehow it was the origin of this perfect clarity. Not Tef itself, but - where it was. Where _he_ was, where his mind had gone: inverted into the mote of bright and dark, nestled in the storm's memories. That single point he had honed his mind to, its focused intent. And now he knew what to do.

Ral widened his hands and moved from thought to action. Tef glowed brighter, calm, steady. The arc between his fingertips zapped through the lantern and engulfed the spark. He felt within his mind for the edges of the spell. Tef required energy to stay alive, but that energy flowed all around him through the Temple's endless pipes. He loosed the gossamer threads of the spell calling Tef into being and fumbled for a place to link them. His mind caught on the storm-lantern. With his new sight he saw how the metal that encased the central chamber echoed every stray pulse of energy. Ral gently shifted the spark-spell into it. His fingertips prickled as the lantern began to resonate in sympathy, the shape of Tef etching the metal like acid. The arc left his hands, collapsing into the lantern's confinement. Ral watched it shrink down into a point of light and anchor itself inside the central chamber.

Did he dare? Had he done it correctly? Well, there was only one way to find out. Very, very carefully, he let go of the spell.

The lantern's light wavered. Flared, then dimmed. Brightened again.

Stayed.

Ral let out an explosive breath. He'd done it. He'd done - well, he wasn't certain what he'd done. But he'd figured out the trick. For once he'd solved one of Josef's sideways tests before the Skymaster could tell him he'd failed it. He'd found the key. Now the arc within the lantern would persist so long as it could draw mana.

Without further debate Ral wadded up his ceremonial robes on the cold surface of the bench, lay down, and fell fast asleep.

 

* * *

 

The Temple greeted the dawn with a full carillon of bells. Ral jerked awake at the first note, then winced and sat up slowly. Blue shadows danced across the tile wall in front of him. He stretched and turned, hardly daring to hope - but the storm-lantern still burned bright as it had when he'd fallen asleep. Glowing ribbons twisted lazily within the glass and filled the room with thin white light. Hot pride bloomed in his chest and he grinned.

The door opened behind him. Ral shoved himself to his feet, ignoring the ache in his spine, and clasped his hands behind his back to greet Skymaster Josef with a courteous nod. The Skymaster said nothing in response, though, and when Ral glanced back up his tutor wasn't looking at him at all; rather he had fixed his gaze on the storm-lantern, and Tef's spark danced in his widened eyes.

"I completed the task you set me, Skymaster," said Ral. Josef's attention jerked back to him. "I hope it meets with your favor."

A strange expression flickered across the Skymaster's face, but then he cleared his throat and his face dropped into its usual blank mask. "What have you learned from your vigil, Student Zarek?"

The question knocked him sideways for a moment; he couldn't tell Josef about the lightning rod, but how could he put into words the state of clarity he had found at the night's nadir, that place within the bright and dark? "I have learned...how to create a spark-lantern," he said at last. "That certain types of metal have an affinity for mana, and others for electricity, and--"

"No," said the Skymaster.

"Ahm," Ral swallowed the rest of his sentence and fished around for more. "Um. What?"

"You were asked to tend a spark through an entire night. Despite the most dire imprecations, I find you asleep." Ral opened his mouth to protest and the Skymaster held up a finger. "This is no strike against you. You have limits; you are mortal, and human. This is the true lesson of the Lantern." Ral's shoulders slumped. "Go and rest, and meditate upon what you have learned," said Josef, not unkindly. "I will see you at the Temple in two days' time."

"Yes, Skymaster," said Ral, retrieving his discarded robes and trying to shake the worst of the wrinkles out.

Despite his instructor's chastising words, Ral left the Temple in higher spirits than he'd entered it. He'd gotten - well, a reasonable amount of sleep, and - yes, his back hurt, and - somehow Josef seemed to think he'd missed something important, but - as the first light of dawn fell between the buildings he felt the storm-lantern's glow warming him from within. He puzzled over the Skymaster's imprecations on the walk home. _Limits?_ What did that have to do with anything? Ral knew that in theory he must have a limit somewhere, and of course there were times when matters presented him with a challenge, but that could hardly be called a _limit;_ thus far the application of himself to the problem had always yielded positive results, even with Josef moving the goalposts. Was he supposed to choose some maximum, some cap to his skill? Why would he willingly circumscribe himself that way?

Perhaps by "limit" the Skymaster had meant that place he had found, where the lightning lived. But limit sounded like the end of something. That state he had unlocked felt quite the opposite - like opening a great gate, like learning how to write or speak or do sums. He possessed now an ability he had not commanded before; he had transformed some part of his potential - that vast potential he _knew_ lay within him - into an actual.

 _No,_ he scolded himself. _That's not what the vigil was supposed to teach you._ He was supposed to be humbled and contemplative. He would go home and rest and afterwards begin to exert the control expected of him. In two days' time he could return to the Temple properly abashed, and his real training could begin.

But just for now...

Ral held a hand close to his face, shifted into that clear state, and a bright arc snapped between finger and thumb. He grinned. _Limits,_ he told the glowing filament. _Limits are for other people._

 

* * *

 

Priest Romanova hadn't been easy to divert from dawn services, but her skeptical expression melted as she examined the storm-lantern, slowly shaking her head. "It's not an illusion," she told the Skymaster. "The arc-spell's clumsy, but stable. I'd swear this was one of the old beacons if I hadn't seen it yesterday."

"Hmm." The Skymaster turned to one of the acolytes who had volunteered to assist with the vigil. "We must request a moment of Mother Sonja's time."

"What shall I tell her?"

The Skymaster looked back at the glowing lantern. "That the situation may be more serious than we first believed."


	7. Need to Know

"Please note that next week's maths quiz has been moved to the day after," said Teacher Rossov. His stick of chalk scraped across the slate as he wrote. "We'll be having a special meeting instead."

Ral didn't pull himself out of his slouch at his seat near the back of the classroom, but he did look up and surreptitiously close the paperback hidden beneath the desk's edge. It was a little early for the announcement he was waiting for, but there was always a chance.

The teacher dropped the chalk in its tray and turned back to his class. "Now that you have all been made initiates of the Temple, you are adults in Tanit's sight," he said, and Ral did sit up straight this time. "It's time you all spoke with Priest Romanova about your Temple vocation."

A buzz of conversation rose immediately in the classroom. Students whispered to each other in hurried tones. Ral's gaze snapped down to his desk as he tried to keep his expression neutral. His heart beat quick in his chest. Rossov let the murmuring continue for a few more moments before clearing his throat. "Our Temple is not a building. It is the community that all of us create together. As adults, it's time for you to choose a way to contribute. When you go home tonight, think about what you might want to do."

 

* * *

 

Ral sat swinging his legs under the bench outside Priest Romanova's office, winding a strand of copper wire between his fingers. Cousin Timofey shouldn't be taking this long. He had nearly wrapped the entire wire into a coil by the time the door opened and Timofey emerged. "You're up," he told Ral. He'd meant to accompany it with a light punch to the shoulder, but halfway through the motion he froze with a look of worry.

Ral ignored his cousin's expression with practiced ease. "I hope you didn't piss her off too much," he said.

Timofey shrugged and grinned. Probably a bad sign.

When he entered the priest gestured to the low, cushioned stool in front of her chair and said, "Hello, Ral."

Ral sat and said, "I know what I want to do."

"Really?" said Priest Romanova, a little smile playing about the corner of her lips. "What do you want to do?"

"I'm going to work on the channeling system."

The priest's pleasant expression flickered. "Let's not get ahead of ourselves, Ral. Why don't we go over the list first?"

"But I already know."

"Maybe there's something else you'd like more. There's no reason not to make sure, is there?"

Ral considered this. "I suppose," he admitted. It wouldn't hurt to see the rest of the list.

Thirty minutes later he stifled a yawn and reconsidered that assessment. Maybe it couldn't hurt, but it could bore him to tears.

"...reshelving the volumes, and rebinding the ones that need it," finished Romanova. "Ral. Ral, are you listening?"

"Hmm?"

"Ral, this will go much faster if you pay attention."

"I was. I mean, I am. I don't want to work in the scriptorium. Is that the last one?"

"I'm afraid it is."

Finally. "Then my answer's still the same. I'm going to work on the channeling system."

"You shouldn't make such an important decision so quickly. Many people your age try several different Temple vocations before they find one they like. You can--"

"You don't want to me to do it," interrupted Ral.

Romanova broke off with a look of sudden guilt. For once Ral hurt to be right. When had it started occurring to him to look for when adults were lying, for the signs that they were hiding things from him? When had he learned to look for truths they didn't want him to know?

"That's not--" tried the priest.

"It is. You don't think I can do it." The faintest current rippled across the back of his neck, and Ral let it. "I'm top of the class in maths and science, ask Teacher Rossov, he'll tell you I can do it. I know it's a lot of work and I have my mage lessons but I can--"

"Ral." Romanova's voice cut through his plea. She paused, her expression contorting. "The Temple's channels carry water and mana for the use of all our priests and mages. We can't... If we let you work on it..."

"If what?" demanded Ral.

"Your condition renders you...ritually impure. The channeling system is sanctified. We can't..."

A bright chill plummeted down through Ral's chest and punched the bottom out of his stomach. Pain washed across his skin in pinprick sparks.

"There must be some--" he heard himself say.

"There isn't. I'm sorry, Ral. Is there... Do you have a second choice? We can talk about..."

"No," said Ral. It surprised him how steady his voice sounded. It should have echoed, rung through the hollow space opening within him.

"Why don't you take a copy of the list and think about it," prompted Romanova gently. "We'll talk again in a few days."

Someone reached out Ral's hand and took the sheet of paper. "Okay," said someone using his voice. Someone was kind enough to stand him up and say goodbye and walk him out the door.

Ral trudged up the stairs to his family's apartment some five hours later. He stopped before the door and brushed futilely at the tar-paper dust that coated his knees and streaked the sides of his trousers, then checked his tunic for evidence and discovered a tear in one sleeve and a scrape along the skin beneath. So that's why his arm had been stinging in the light rain. The Temple's distant bells were striking eighteen and thunderheads muttered in the gathering dusk. His father was at the kitchen table as usual, methodically devouring his dinner. Ral leaned against the doorframe.

"Da?" he said. His father put down his fork and looked up. "I... Could I go with you to work tonight?"

 

* * *

 

The smell of mud and stone and metal closed in around him like an embrace as Ral climbed down the ladder into one of the many steam tunnels of the Izzet League's Landstrasse Interchange worksite. The makeshift tools packed in his satchel banged painfully against his hip. The air hung thick and hot and he could already feel himself breaking out in a sweat. So far the Eighth District's underground was wet and dark and damp, but mostly damp. His father held his arc-lamp high, watching. When Ral jumped off the last rung of the ladder onto the muddy brick floor he said, "We're going to go talk to Site Supervisor Farnsworth. If she says you can stay, then you can stay. Otherwise you go home right now."

"Yes, Da," said Ral distractedly. His head swung back and forth as he tried to take in the great tangle of machinery that loomed in the arc-lamp's light. Three immense, shining brass conduits appeared out of the tunnel's darkness and vanished back into it on the other side, framed by an impossible web of pipes, gauges, valves, and stranger things than Ral could name. Ral's father led them towards a pool of white light a hundred meters or so down the tunnel. The mud squelched under Ral's boots and condensation dripped from the steam pipes' joints. Sweat prickled the skin beneath his long sleeves; he rolled up the right one and hoped it would be enough. When they reached the light Ral's father hung his own arc-lamp on the wall and straightened up, inspecting the string of lights hung at the tunnel's apex.

"Alexei!" came a shout from the darkness. A face appeared out of the gloom. "Where've you been? We capped number three aux but the seal's failing and we need you right now!"

Ral's father frowned. "What are you doing capping three? I told you to reroute it to seven to keep the pressure up!"

"I know, but Vanya was on day shift and he said to cap it and now we're about to lose flow--"

"Mother's tits, Vanya's an idiot," declared his dad. He grabbed his lamp back off the hook, then suddenly remembered Ral. "Ah - can it wait a few minutes? I need to--" A yell and a sudden loud whistle cut him off. His father cursed and took another step, then looked back at his son.

"I can find her on my own," offered Ral.

His father grabbed a second arc-lamp and pressed it into Ral's chest. He pointed into the darkness and said, "Go straight down this tunnel till you find her. She's the one wearing Izzet sigils. _Straight down,_ you hear me? Don't take _any_ turns." Then he pulled himself atop the first great pipe and bellowed above the hiss of escaping steam, "What's the damage!?"

Ral looked down the tunnel in the direction his father had pointed. If someone else was down there with a lamp, he couldn't see it. The sweat on his skin began to turn cold. He shifted the arc-lamp to one hand and snapped a spark between finger and thumb of the other. Thus armed, he set off into the darkness. He passed a few pitch-black openings in the brick walls, but each time a flash of spark-light revealed boring dead ends and he continued without investigating. The tunnel wound back and forth a few times before he saw the blaze of arc-lamps ahead. Stark white lit up a worker crouched on the ground, halfway into an access vent. They had strips of red and blue cloth tied around their arms and a larger sash at their waist over a leather work-vest. When Ral got closer his spark threw sharp shadows along the contours of the round Izzet sigil stamped into the back of it. He halted just inside the arc-lanterns' light and doused the little spark. That Guild seal held him for a moment, the image of _the dragon;_ clouds shredding beneath broad ruby wings, streamers of golden flame whipped back on the wind.

"Are you the Site Supervisor?" he asked. His voice squeaked halfway through and embarrassment got him square in the gut.

The Izzet woman pushed herself back from the vent, grumbling. She had a bright red and blue bandanna tied around her head to hold her hair up. In the close humidity of the steam tunnels Ral already envied it. She sat back on her haunches and regarded Ral with weary suspicion. "I am."

"I'm Ral Zarek. I came with the crew. To work tonight."

"You related to Alexei?"

"He's my dad."

The Izzet tapped a finger against her lips. "You're his oldest? Aren't you a mage apprentice?"

"Yes. No. It's complicated."

"This is a Tanish thing, isn't it."

Ral sighed internally and just said, "Yeah."

The Izzet shrugged and stood up. "Alright, Ral Zarek. What're you doing here? We don't need a new mage." She groped along the top of one of the main conduits, looking for something.

"I want to be your assistant and learn artificing."

The Izzet gave a sharp laugh. "Ral, this is a work site, not a classroom. I don't have time to babysit."

"I'm not a baby. I'm thirteen and a half and I can light a storm-lantern and I'm top of all my classes." _Well, I was. And I still would be, if I wanted to._ "Give me something to do and I'll show you."

"You can light a what?" The Izzet paused in her search and looked back at him, more intently this time. "What sort of magic do you do?"

In response Ral held up one hand and let a small arc dance across his fingertips. The Izzet's brows shot up. "You're a spark-mage?"

 _Close enough._ "Yes."

"What do you want to learn artificing for?"

Ral looked baffled. "So I can make things? And also fix them when they break."

"Hmm." The Izzet glanced about herself, then bent and retrieved a small bin from the muddy ground. It rattled as she handed it to Ral. "Okay, Ral. Then why don't you...get all the nuts and washers off these bolts. Bring them back when you're done."

Ral took the box, staggering a bit under its weight. All the bolts inside slid around and thunked against the sides. A thought occurred. She was the site _supervisor,_ wasn't she? She would probably want to know.

"Also someone told Da that the seal was failing on number three because Vanya told him to cap it off," relayed Ral.

"Are you serious?" demanded the Izzet.

"Yes?"

"Oh dear gods, Vanya's an idiot." The Supervisor snatched up a handheld lantern sitting in the mud and hurried down the tunnel back towards where his father had been working.

Ral found a low equipment locker, sat down, took off his leather satchel and set it next to him. He used one bottom edge of the box to scrape away the mud on the floor until he had cleared a patch of soggy red brickwork. He dumped out the box and picked up the first bolt, thick as his thumb. Then he began to work.

When Yelena Farnsworth returned to the junction she had been busily instrumenting before they had nearly lost all pressure in the number three bleed pipe because Vanya was an idiot, she found Ral sitting atop one of her equipment lockers holding the box she'd given him. When she approached he raised his head, held up the box, and said, "I got them all."

The Site Supervisor didn't seem nearly as pleased as he'd hoped. "Let me see."

Ral handed her the box and stood up. "I got them all," he said.

The Izzet examined one of the bolts. An inch-wide stripe of clean steel gleamed against the rusted metal where the nut had been. She dropped it back in the box and said, "So you did."

Ral bristled. "Of course I did. I said I would."

"Well. I'm sorry I doubted you, Ral Zarek." The Izzet tucked the box under one arm and stuck out her hand. "You can call me Yelena, by the way. Nice to meet you."

"Nice to meet you." They shook. "Do you live at Nivix?"

Yelena laughed. "I _wish_. Nivix is for full Guildmasters, people close to our _parun._ The Firemind."

"You mean Niv-Mizzet? Yelena looked surprised, so Ral added, "I see him fly over the city sometimes."

"I suppose he's hard to miss. No, I work for the Eighth District Infrastructure Directorate, supervising the local workers."

"Like my Da?"

"Like your dad."

Ral stared down at the cleared patch on the tunnel floor for a moment. Then he raised his head, set his jaw, and asked, "So...will you teach me?"

Yelena's mouth twisted. "How about this. You can come along with me _for tonight._ I'll tell you about what I'm doing, and _maybe_ you can help. _Sometimes."_ Ral opened his mouth, but Yelena held up one finger to forestall him. "But. No butting in when I'm talking to the crews, and if I give you an order for your own safety, you have to follow it. Okay?"

Ral suppressed the unexpected laugh that wanted to boil up out of him. Instead he nodded as solemnly as he could and said, "Okay."

Yelena sighed. "Somehow I suspect that promise lacked sincerity. Nevertheless." She picked up the tools she'd abandoned when Ral delivered his message and braced a hand on the edge of the narrow access hatch. "Stay over here with me while I'm working."

Ral sat on his haunches as Yelena worked herself back into the hatch with a series of annoyed grunts. "Did you fix what went wrong with the pipes?" he asked when she had gotten most of her torso inside.

"Yes," said Yelena. Her voice echoed inside the conduit. Ral could hear the clunk and squeak of moving metal.

"What went wrong?"

"It's a long story."

"I'm good at listening."

Something hit the conduit with a loud _bang_ and Yelena said a word Ral was fairly certain he wasn't supposed to know. He heard her take a deep breath. Then she said, "Alright. Well..."

 

* * *

 

He started yawning before Yelena finished installing her instruments, but clamped his lips shut when she re-emerged. When she wasn't looking he pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, willing them open. That worked for about ten minutes until he nearly slid off his crate into the valve assembly Yelena had laid out on the tunnel's brick floor.

Yelena sat back and said, "Ral, go home."

"What? No. I'm fine." The massive yawn that interrupted him halfway through the sentence somewhat undermined his case.

"No work when you're sleepy. That's when you make mistakes."

"I don't make mistakes," retorted Ral.

"Knock it off, Ral. Everybody makes mistakes, even the Firemind, although he tends to eat you if you point them out. If you mess up down here, my system breaks and people get killed. Go home before I tell your Da to take you there." Ral's expression wavered and she added, "We're working on this interchange for the next year at least. The site's not going anywhere."

"Okay," said Ral reluctantly. He stood and stretched; another yawn stole his breath.

"See you tomorrow," said Yelena absently, still frowning at the mechanism.

"I'll - see you tomorrow," said Ral. Exhausted pride bloomed in his chest but at the moment the thought of his distant, warm bed exercised an overpowering lure.

Hours later the sound of a particular door slamming closed woke him from a deep and dreamless sleep. Jaro's breathing echoed soft and steady from his side of the bed. Ral lay still and fought to keep his eyes open as he heard his father's familiar tread climbing the stairs. His parents never seemed to realize that when both bedrooms had their windows open, someone in one room could listen in on the other. Now he heard his mother, groggy with sleep, just woken by her husband's return; his father, dull with exhaustion, ready for his own rest.

"Was the site supervisor angry?" said his mother.

"No," admitted his father. "Even said he was a bit useful."

"Well, there you are. You know how Ral is with anything he can take apart. He's inherited your knack for all those ridiculous machines."

"I don't like him running around the worksite on his own."

"He's so restless. He needs a diversion, with all that training and all his rituals. It's a lot of work."

"That work is for his own good."

"I know, but that doesn't make it easier. Let him have this."

His father was quiet for a moment. "I should be spending more time with him," he said in a voice Ral had to strain to hear. "He won't be a boy for much longer."

"Mm-hmm." He could hear his mother's sigh. "Not much longer at all."

 

* * *

 

"Go home, Ral," said Yelena, not unkindly.

Ral tried to catch his breath mid-yawn and nodded ruefully. He trudged back to the toolkit, replaced the wrench he'd been using, and unhooked his satchel from a protruding bit of pipework.

"Oh, here's for the past two weeks," said Yelena behind him. When Ral turned around she tossed him a small coin-purse. Ral nearly fumbled the catch in surprise. "Put in a bit extra for the half-week at the beginning, don't worry."

Ral pulled open the purse's drawstring mouth. "What's this?"

Yelena smiled. "It's money, Ral. It can be exchanged for goods and services."

"No, but-- why are you giving me money?"

"You work here, don't you?"

"Yes, but..." Ral stared at the purse's contents, shining dully under the worklights. Sure, he'd seen that much money before, but it ultimately belonged to his parents. He'd never truly considered that he himself could possess such a sum.

"Thank you," he told Yelena.

Yelena waved it off. "Don't thank me too much, District Office payroll thinks you're a goblin laborer. Surprise surprise, they don't make a whole lot." But she was smiling all the same. "See you tomorrow."

Ral kept the purse in the palm of one hand as he picked his way back to the surface access, hung his safety equipment on a conspicuous hook so his father would know he'd left, and climbed the ladder back to street level. He squeezed the purse gently and felt metal shift beneath his fingers. He could buy a book without asking anyone else. He could buy his own toolset and he wouldn't have to explain why he wanted them or what they were for or why his parents should spend their coin on them. He could do it himself! The concept was staggering.

His body ached with fatigue and he had to fight to keep himself awake on the walk home. In two weeks - plus a bit extra - he'd banged both knees, skinned an elbow, and acquired a sore red patch on one hand that served as an excellent reminder not to assume any part of the steam conduit was cool enough to touch. He still hadn't managed to get the grease stains off his fingers. And in two weeks Yelena hadn't yelled at him at all for poking around in the machinery, except for that one time he'd nearly gotten his sleeve caught in a fan belt. She'd given him tools and shown him what to do, and he could install a pressure dial now, and he knew how to put the safety equipment on, and when he scrounged up a discarded arc-lantern and lit it himself her only comment had been to remind him not to put electrical equipment on anything marked with double pink stripes. The work itself left him exhausted and the tunnels were close and damp and more than once he'd heard sounds in the darkness far too big to have been rats.

And he had never felt more at home.


	8. Risks of Exposure

Yelena straightened from her cramped position and stretched her arms upwards. "Time to clock out, kiddo," she told Ral.

"Is it six already?" said Ral, but Yelena had already produced her pocket chronometer. It had indeed gone six. A little ways above their heads the sun would be lifting just above the spiked Ravnican horizon. Ral let the access panel he'd been holding up bang closed, gave it an extra push to check it had locked into position. Yelena stepped back while he packed up the remaining tools, frowning alternately at the junction where they'd been working and at the sheets of dirty paper pinned to her clipboard. She scribbled one final note as Ral shouldered the equipment bags.

"Is that it for the northern section?" he asked as they walked back towards the Landstrasse site's main street-level access. "We must have cleared all the return piping by now."

"That's about it," agreed Yelena, her attention elsewhere. She flipped pages rapidly, frowned at whatever she saw, then flipped through them again in search of something else. Her concentration had not abated by the time they reached the access shaft. Ral slung both equipment satchels into the appropriate lockers, dropped his safety gear, reclaimed the coat he'd shed in deference to the steam tunnels' heat, while the supervisor marked quick strokes on heavily-annotated forms. The moment he'd slung the coat across his shoulders she said without looking up, "Payday, make sure to grab yours."

"Got it."

Yelena finally lowered the clipboard and met his eyes. "I really appreciate your staying late this week, Ral. I know you've got to balance all those lessons and mage-classes and whatever else, but we might actually meet schedule at this rate."

"No problem."

"Don't know when you're finding time to sleep." Ral shrugged and she gave him an appreciative chuckle. "Ah, to be fourteen again."

"I'm almost fifteen."

"You're fourteen and a half. That's not almost fifteen."

"It rounds up to fifteen."

"Well, it also rounds down to ten." Ral scowled.

"So that's it, then? North arm is clear?"

Yelena chewed her lip, looking at her papers again. "North arm is clear," she said.

"Finally. What's next?"

"I have to look at the schedules," hedged Yelena, sounding oddly uncertain. "We'll talk more tomorrow. Go get some rest."

 

* * *

 

In hindsight, Ral should have known he wasn't going to get away with it. In hindsight, he would probably have done it anyway.

He didn't feel much like looking at his mother, or his father, or the teacher dressed in his Temple vest sitting on the end of the spring-green sofa. So instead he stared at the strip of white gauze saved from his parents' wedding that hung on the wall of the sitting room. A few slivers of afternoon sun fought their way through the street-facing window and he hoped Josef had found his note. Teacher Rossov had caught him before he'd gotten to their practice room and adamantly refused to let Ral out of his sight, even to tell the Skymaster where he was going. In the end he'd scrawled _Gone home, family business,_ on a spare scrap of paper and the teacher had countersigned it. It might be enough to lighten the inevitable disciplinary exercises he'd have to do to make up his absence.

His gaze slid down to the ornate marriage contract framed beneath the gauze. He traced a watercolored flourish and tried to figure out where he'd slipped up. If he'd come up with a better excuse than illness, would Teacher Rossov have thought to inquire after him? Something to remember for next time.

His mother put a hand on his knee, forcing him to look over at her. "Ral," she asked gently. "Why didn't you go to your classes last week?"

He looked away again and shrugged. "Why should I? I already know all the lessons."

"Ral, that's--" began his father.

"I do, okay?" snapped Ral. The interruption caught the adults by surprise and he went on, "All I do in class is read my book and try to stay awake. I'd rather get some rest."

"Is that where you went?" asked his mother.

Ral rolled his eyes with exaggerated disdain. "Don't worry, I didn't go anywhere _dangerous._ I found a spot and I slept in for a few more hours, okay? That's all."

"Are you not sleeping well? Do you feel ill?"

"No," said his father. "He's staying too late at the worksite." Ral must have looked surprised, because his father fixed him with a sharp gaze and said, "Did you think I wouldn't notice, boy? He's been swapping his equipment out at midnight so I'd think he'd gone home. You've been out till dawn for the past six days, haven't you."

"So what if I have? I still went to mage-lessons. And the tunnels are better than classes, I learn more there anyway."

"But don't you want to see your teacher, and your friends?" said his mother.

"No," said Ral. He set his jaw and returned his gaze resolutely to the framed document on the far wall.

"Ral, you're an excellent student, and I know you've been enjoying your trips with your father. But your grades are very important, and--"

"Why?" demanded Ral. "As long as I have _this--"_ he wrenched up his left sleeve and took a grim satisfaction in the way they recoiled, as if the mere sight of his mark was contagious "-then my grades don't mean _shit."_

_"Ral!"_ said his father. "You will not use language like that around your teachers!"

"Ral, it's important that--" his teacher began.

"That is it," declared his father. "No more visiting the worksite."

"Da! You _can't!"_

"I can and I have. Go to your room and stay there for the rest of the night. While you're up there, you will think of an apology for your teacher. And tomorrow we're _all_ going to Temple bright and early. Understand?"

Ral bit down on the words that wanted to burst from him, but he slammed his way up the stairs and into his room as loudly as possible. Jaro came upstairs about an hour later with a plate of food. He put it on Ral's side of the bed without saying anything. Ral glanced up from his book, then went back to reading.

Ral waited until he heard his father leave for the night and his brother's breathing had evened out into the sound of deep sleep. Then he inched the window open and made the familiar scramble up his building's side. Across to the next roof, down and to the next, down again and he was at street level, out in the Ravnican night.

He'd planned to find Yelena by the sound of her arc-lantern; she had a nicer one than most of the work crews, something that had come out of a real guild workshop, and to Ral's magical senses it sang its own unique vibration. But when he descended the ladder from street level he found her in the small alcove just off the access shaft. It served as the site office and there was, in theory, a desk under the piles of paperwork that half-hid her from view, but Ral had never seen it. When she saw him her face fell and his heart fell with it. But he still scraped up a friendly expression and said, "What's on the slate for tonight?"

"Ral..." she began.

He gave up any pretense of calm. "My father's already been here, hasn't he?" Yelena's silence served as an answer. "Fine, I know when I'm not wanted."

"Knock it off," barked Yelena. That stern tone, the one that meant _you're about to cut into a live steam-pipe,_ stopped him cold halfway to the door. He heard the scrape of wood as she dragged a chair across the brick. "Now sit down and talk to me like an adult."

Ral hesitated long enough that Yelena would know he wasn't doing this just because she'd told him to. Then he turned around and sat in the chair she'd pulled up next to her own.

"Listen, Ral, you're smart and you work hard. You're a good assistant."

"But."

"But your dad doesn't like you working here. It's time for you to move on."

"So that's it. Just like that."

Yelena sounded more harried than angry. "Honestly, it's not just your father. This isn't how I wanted to break it to you, but..." She ran long fingers through her hair, temporarily freed from its bandanna. "We're about to seal up the steam and switch to the gas lines. I can't risk you anywhere near there."

"I can control--" protested Ral, but Yelena was already shaking her head. "When it comes to spark-magic and gas lines, it only takes a second to blow half the District sky-high. I wouldn't even let a full guildmage in, and that's the truth."

"So you're sending me away." Current rose in his blood and tried to vent itself in brilliant arcs. Ral fought it back down.

_"So_ I'm saying that instead of coming here tomorrow night, you could wait a week, then go down to the grid substation at Belvedere and Vitava and ask for Oliver Fong."

Curiosity cooled his anger. "Who's that?"

"Fong works at a lab here in the Eighth. My office has him out on the worksites sometimes, and lately he's been asking for an extra hand."

"Are you going to tell my dad?"

"I'm sending you away from my worksite like he asked. Where you go and what you do with your time afterwards is your own business."

"I understand."

"And - this is for you." She shoved aside one of the paperwork towers and fished a heavy black leather satchel out from underneath. "Your old one looked a little worn-out, and one of my co-workers was getting a new one, so..."

Ral took the satchel carefully with both hands, staring at it. He knew there was something he was supposed to say right now. There were words that he should make happen. But instead he stared at it in silence.

"It's an adult size, but you're growing fast. Should be about the right length for you," added Yelena.

Ral unslung his little brown bag, pushed back the covering flap of Yelena's gift, and put his old satchel inside. The entire thing fit within.

He felt a warm hand rest on his shoulder. Yelena sighed. "You're a good kid, Ral. You'll be okay." She squeezed his shoulder once, then released it. "You'll be okay."

 

* * *

 

The Izzet had built the surface access at Belvedere and Vitava into the lower level of a nearby building. It took Ral nearly half an hour to find it. Once he finally found his way in he saw why. Yelena's Landstrasse site crew worked on the great interchanges that supplied Ravnica's people with steam and gas and water. The substation was a permanent installation that dealt with the far more delicate and potentially dangerous machinery of Ravnica's mana grid. No muddy tunnels or secondhand safety equipment here; the corridors were clean, well-lit, well-maintained. The roll of tools he clutched in one hand bought Ral a measure of immunity from suspicious gazes, and every time someone stopped him he simply asked for Oliver Fong and went where they pointed. He threaded his way through increasingly wider corridors till at last he emerged into a vaulted chamber lit a dim, swirling blue by secondary radiation. The sheer quantity of magical energy within made sparks crackle through his hair and it took several seconds and the quiet hum of a Breath discipline to keep himself from emitting random arcs.

Mana leakage heated the chamber well above comfort. The Izzet had his robes hiked up to the knee and he'd twisted the excess fabric of his tunic underneath its hem at the small of his back, but even so Ral could see sweat staining his back. He glanced up when Ral entered.

"Are you Oliver Fong?" asked Ral.

"Yeah?" said the Izzet.

"I'm Ral Zarek. The supervisor's office said you wanted an assistant."

Oliver looked him up and down. His eyes were a shockingly bright shade of green-on-green. _Elven,_ guessed Ral, then reconsidered. _Or...Half-elven. Oh._

"And they sent...you," said Oliver.

"I know what I'm doing."

Oliver sighed and stood. "Kid, how old are you?"

"Why does that matter?"

"Just answer the question."

"Fine. I'm almost fifteen."

"Yeah. That's what I thought. Look, what are you doing here? Don't you have...school or a job or something?"

"I want to learn artificing."

"Then get an apprenticeship."

"I need to earn some money to help out my grandma and buy stuff. Mom's gone and Dad died a couple years ago, so I live with her now. She doesn't have a lot."

That made the first dent in Oliver's composure he'd managed so far. "Oof. I'm sorry," he said.

"It's all right. The Izzet League doesn't pay well--"

"Tell me about it," muttered Oliver.

"--but it's more than I'd get as an apprentice, plus I can learn about mana dynamics and things like that, so it's just as good as being in school. And I'm not a kid. I worked on the Landstrasse site."

"Yelena's dig?" Ral nodded. "Hmm. If you've got a job with Yelena, what're you doing here?"

"They started work on the gas lines. Supervisor Yelena said it was too dangerous for me because I'm a spark-mage."

Oliver's brows went up. "No shit. She doesn't even let the guildmages in when they've got the gas lines cracked." He studied Ral a moment longer. "Alright, well, what can you do?"

"I already said I'm a spark-mage. Yelena taught me basic artificing. I can read and write and I'm good at maths. And mana flow. And I learn fast. And I can work all night, in case that's important."

"It might be. I'm a researcher, not an artificer. I asked the office for an assistant to help me collect data for my work."

"What do you collect?"

"My professor - do you know what a research lab is?" Ral grudgingly admitted he did not. "Me and a bunch of other students work for a professor who has a laboratory around here."

Ral gaped at Oliver. "You're a _student?_ But you're so old!"

_"Anyway,"_ said Oliver sharply, "my professor studies material-mana interaction. She sends me out with the work crews to measure how different metals degrade when they're exposed to magical energies."

"Oh. That makes sense," said Ral.

"Glad you approve." Oliver grimaced. "But the infrastructure supervisor for this subdivision rotated out a few years back and his assistants are still fighting over the job, so half the time I end up down here just trying to keep the mana running."

"You should get his job."

"Eh. Too much paperwork. At least this way I get to go out in the field, you know?"

"No."

"Imagine you always had to do homework and you never got to do any magic."

"Skymaster Josef made me do Breath disciplines for three years straight before I got to start on Crown."

"Wow. That sounds boring."

"It's super boring."

"Yeah, that's why I don't want the supervisor's job."

Ral nodded solemnly and said, "I can understand that."

Something in the tangle of machinery went _klung_ and about thirteen different things happened at once. Some were bright and some were hot and some were just confusing but all of them were very, very loud. Oliver grabbed a notebook bound in stiff waxed paper and shoved it towards Ral, then took off towards a vent that had just emitted a long streak of purple light. "You can write?" he yelled over his shoulder. "Follow me and write down what I tell you to!"

"What's happening?" shouted Ral over the hissing, clanging machinery.

"Science, kid!" yelled back Oliver. "Come on!"


	9. Spontaneous Disassembly

The Boros lieutenant rapped her truncheon against the barred door. "Zarek. You're up."

Ral cracked one eye, then sat up and slowly got to his feet. He shook out the tunic he'd wadded up for a pillow, shrugged, and put it back on. The dizziness faded mercifully quickly and he was able to walk over to the door by the time the lieutenant hauled it open. She gave him a disdainful glare and he considered moving even slower just to further prove his point, but fatigue vetoed the idea. The lieutenant stayed a quarter-pace behind him as they walked down the corridor.

Halfway down the hall Ral spotted a scrawny human teenager sitting on the bench inside another cell. Dark purple bruising bloomed across half his face and he held one arm close against his body. When they drew even with his door Ral slammed a fist against it and yelled, "Fuck you, asshole!"

The cell's occupant jumped and scrambled away so fast he fell off the bench. "Enough!" barked the lieutenant, wrestling Ral's arms behind his back. "Cut it out or I'll cuff you, kid."

"I'm not a kid," said Ral, yanking his hands from her grasp. But he entered the small interrogation room when the lieutenant held the door open, and slumped in the single unoccupied chair with little more than a sullen glare in the direction of the obviously false mirror across one wall. The Azorius wojek on the other side of the table closed a file as Ral entered, folded his hands, and looked straight at him. Ral guessed he was waiting for his subject to talk first. He severely underestimated how tired Ral was, then.

The wojek cracked first. "We can charge you as an accessory. Your friend Rowan--"

"He's not my fucking friend," spat Ral.

"--is definitely being charged with multiple counts of trespassing and intent, and you've already got the record."

"That stuff's all bullshit," said Ral.

"But. We can cut you a deal if you're willing to help us out."

Ral stayed silent. The wojek looked inside his file again, then got up and left the room. So this was the part where they tried to make him nervous. Ral half-closed his eyes and fixed his mind on the familiar hum of an older Breath disciplines. Sure enough, when the wojek returned after half an hour he looked mildly confused at Ral's total calm. But he sat at the table anyway and said, "Good news. Your friend's decided to plead guilty."

"Good for him," said Ral. "Can I go now?"

"Which is weird for Rowan," continued the wojek. "Not like this is his first visit to the precinct cells, but usually he at least tries to weasel out of it. This time it seems he'd rather be in police custody than deal with you."

"Can I _go_ now."

"What'd he do, kid?"

"I'm not a kid. And I'm not telling you anything."

The wojek folded his hands and leaned forward. "That's all right. I don't really need you to. See, there's no way a petty thief as dumb as Rowan gets inside the district mana grid's primary interchange on his lonesome. But maybe if that petty thief is friends with someone who works on an Izzet site - who's been given access keys - maybe he talks said friend into letting him in for a bit, right? What'd he tell you? Someone was sick? He just needed to pick something up?"

Ral grimaced and stared at the table's surface. The wojek kept waiting. Finally he muttered, "He said he wanted to see my work."

"Aha. The old ego trip. So you let him in and he tried to jack..." The wojek consulted his file again. "...about thirty kilos of mizzium. Ambitious, if you don't count the fact that he had no idea how to get it back out of the interchange, let alone fence the stuff. So of course you want to kick his ass. I understand that, kid. I'd want to kick his ass too. Thing is, Rowan seems to think you'll actually do it. Mind telling us why?"

Ral looked up into the wojek's eyes. Then he let a brilliant arc dance up his spine and ripple out across his shoulders. The wojek shoved himself away from the table with a curse.

"I'm a spark-mage," said Ral calmly. "People don't tend to cross me."

The wojek made a face halfway between disgust and fear. "Fuck, kid, you ought to be going down for assault instead." Ral narrowed his eyes, enjoying the minute flinch the wojek couldn't quite hide.

After a few seconds the wojek got himself under control and pulled his chair back up to the table. He waited a little longer in the vague hope of further information, but Ral kept a tight hold on his expression and eventually the wojek said, "Well, it'd be a pain to file the paperwork to charge you, and it sounds like the League's got their own punishment in mind. Good luck with that."

"Can. I. Go. Now," growled Ral.

"You're free for the moment, Ral Zarek. Front desk has your stuff," said the wojek dismissively.

His mother had come, this time. Too early in the day for his father. Ral took his time emptying the rattling bin containing his personal effects. Behind him he heard, "The Senate isn't planning to charge him, and the Legion will follow that. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time." The lieutenant's professional tone belied none of the contempt on her face that said what she would have done if Ral were her case. Ral dropped the bright stainless-steel ring of keys that had started all this shit into an inner pocket of his black satchel and slung it back across his shoulders.

"Ral," said his mother gently. "Let's go home, okay?"

Ral followed her out of the precinct, giving the lieutenant one last glare on the way out. His mother looked both ways before she left the building. Probably checking for anyone she knew. Probably making sure no one saw her fetching her rebellious, delinquent son from the local Boros precinct station. He stopped at the base of the steps, looking at the oblivious tide that streamed along the Ravnican streets.

"Ral," said his mother gently. He didn't move. "Ral, we have to talk about this."

"No we don't."

His mother didn't speak again till they reached the apartment. When she closed the door behind them she said, "Now you and I are going to have a discussion," but Ral was already halfway up the stairs to his room. When he opened the door he found Jaro stretched across the entire bed working sums in a notebook. He sat up guiltily when Ral entered, but his older brother just went to a shelf along the wall, picked through their contents, and dropped a few pieces of twisted scrap and a dial cannibalized from some old machinery into his heavy black satchel.

"Did you get it?" asked Jaro eagerly.

Ral fished in the satchel for the sticky-sweet price of his little brother staying quiet about Ral's late-night entrances and exits. "They had caramel this time," he said, tossing the bag of toffee to Jaro. "Don't eat it all at once."

"You're not getting away without talking to me, Ral," called his mother after him. "You come down here right now!"

"Can't. Lessons." Ral brushed past her in the hallway and returned to street level.

The second-largest of the Temple's great casting arenas had a high ceiling and a surprising amount of natural sunlight funneled in by mirrors and lightwells, angled to light up the huge colorful mosaics that covered the walls and floor. Not that Josef cared; he had chosen it because it had the strongest wards. That struck Ral as a rather silly precaution, but if he had to suffer the endlessly iterated practice for Arrow Vigil, at least he could suffer in a nice sunny room.

Ral paused in the antechamber to stash his outside clothing in a chest and wash his hands and face in the ritual basin. He heard hinges squeak and looked up to see Cousin Stefan in the middle of extracting his own clothing from another chest. Stefan opened his mouth to speak; Ral only glared in silence, and after another moment Stefan dropped his gaze and let the trunk lid slam closed. Ral splashed his face and hands with the cold water a little more vigorously than might be necessary, dried them on the sky-blue cloth. Stefan still meant to try passing Arrow, then. Interesting. Well, at least he'd finally learned to stop trying to talk to Ral. Stefan's gift had unambiguously reached its limit in raw strength a few years back, but his cousin, to Ral's mild surprise, had persisted in his training. He had to admit that Stefan had patience and a deft touch; his cousin's skills would likely improve even if he couldn't draw more power.

When he pushed open the bronze door in the arena's eastern wall he saw his tutor standing at the middle of the intricate knotwork floor next to the meter-wide practice basin. "I'm here," he called.

Josef didn't move. When Ral reached him his mouth thinned, but he said nothing. Ral was late and Ral was improperly dressed, at least by the Skymaster's standards. But he was just punctual enough and just neat enough that Josef couldn't punish him for it, not if he wanted to get on with the day's lessons. Ral suppressed a grin at his tutor's discomfort. Calculations correct, then. Like hell he'd give Josef the satisfaction of disciplining him.

"So you are," said his tutor instead. He knocked the side of one foot against the shallow training basin on the floor next to him and held an arrow out to Ral; not the chased silver of the real ceremonial object, just a carved wooden training replica. Ral slotted it point-upwards into the notch carved for that purpose at the basin's center. Beneath the basin the colored tiles spiraled out in beautiful interlocking patterns. Threads of water and mana wove the same shapes underneath the ceramics. Three concentric circles anchored stronger and stronger wards around the center. Josef walked to the edge of the second ring, folded his arms, and said, "Begin."

After five months' practice Ral had to grudgingly acknowledge that Arrow Vigil made sense as a threshold rite for Temple weather-mages, storm or normal. It had only taken him a couple weeks of attempts to get a cloud capable of filling the basin with rainwater high enough to cover an arrow's point. But clouds were simple. _Rain_ was hard. A squall that could fit within a room differed severely from one that watered the city outside. In the pocket storm he was meant to conjure Ral's own magic had to stand in for all the forces that would naturally lift and sculpt the clouds. Josef might be an authoritarian jackass, but the first time he tried to construct weather at scale Ral understood all the ridiculous mental exercises his tutor had obsessed over. The motions of air and water and heat and vapor that boiled within even the most peaceful raincloud demanded his complete attention. He could swear he was doing the exact same thing each time, but sometimes the dwarf storm he tried to conjure would rain itself out in seconds, or slump into ground-level fog, or (most often) float there and refuse to precipitate at all. The same procedure _had_ to give the same results. But the slightest error in structure, in his temperatures, and the storm would do something entirely different than he'd intended. And, as usual, his particular magic made things even harder. Josef had warned him the day of his first attempt that he would have more trouble than the regular students, and Ral had quickly discovered this was one of the supremely frustrating times his tutor was right.

Josef gestured at the tiled floor. Three walls of magical warding sprang into existence. Ral braced himself and began to weave the seed framework of energy flows. Constructing it took about five minutes; checking and rechecking it for errors took him nearly half an hour. Only when he had satisfied himself that the skeleton of mana would conduct in a simple and above all confined pattern did he begin to pull moisture. Mist condensed and flowed from the pools lining the walls as he directed it up onto his structure. At the apex of the casting room a dense white knot of cloud bloomed outwards. Vapor flowed along his graven paths. Now Ral began to alter the temperatures, heating and cooling, letting the air swirl, rise, fall. The cloud thickened and began to cast a shadow. He held it there for a moment and glanced towards his tutor. Josef nodded. Ral took a moment to anchor a cell of still air around himself, then took full control of the airflows inside the room, replicating in miniature the layered winds and temperatures of the real atmosphere. Josef watched from his own pocket of eerie calm.

The nascent storm swelled, darkened, and fought. It always fought him, just as Josef had warned him from the start, because when Ral made a cloud, it wanted to _grow_. Power pulsed in his fingertips, in his heart. The storm strained at its fetters. It wanted to be free, and he ached to let it. He disentangled a loop of mana and his shoulders protested. The world blurred behind the lens of two days' fatigue, barely alleviated by his brief nap in the Boros cell. The brutal morning shoved its way back to the forefront of his attention, the long and awful night that had preceded it. Well, all right, he'd fucked up letting Rowan into the mana interchange, and all right, he probably shouldn't have tried to beat the shit out of him that close to sensitive equipment, but - but he'd been so _angry,_ and - and all right, maybe he should have gone and gotten someone Guild before he tried to fix the shit Rowan had broken in his utterly inept attempt at theft. But _still_. What goddamned right did Oliver have to yell at him about it? It wasn't his fucking fault! How could he have known Rowan was stupid enough to try something like that? It wasn't as if Ral had meant to do anything wrong, and it wasn't as if he'd actually harmed the grid infrastructure. He cared about their work just as much as Oliver, what right did that smug Izzet bastard have to treat him like--

An arc crackled between two peaks of cloud.

"Boy! Stop it!" snapped Josef.

Who the hell was he to boss Ral around? He was fucking _trying,_ all right!? They had no _right_ to judge him for this bullshit! How _could_ they!?

Webs of electricity glowed across miniature thunderheads. The storm thrashed and pulled at its bindings. It wanted to grow.

All the slights he endured every day, reminded himself to tolerate, reminded himself not to be selfish or violent or rude or impatient and he was through with pretending. Of restricting himself and reminding himself and punishing himself, of holding back, of forcing himself into a foreign shape.

It wanted to be free.

Once, _just once,_ it would be his turn, and they were all going to do what he wanted instead. They would see what he could do. They would understand that he was beyond their petty authority. How dare they constrain him!?

"Zarek! Control yourself this instant!" bellowed Josef.

How _dare_ they!

Ral looked his tutor straight in the eye.

Then he turned his palms upwards and let the storm loose.

The dark knot of cloud shot up and blotted out the lightwells in an instant. Wind screamed to life and flung sheets of chill rain against the tiled walls; then a moment later it clattered and shrieked as all the droplets froze to hail. Brilliant hissing arcs rippled up his arms and exuberance burned in their wake. He drowned in that delicious insane glee, the manic joy of power he had not tasted in years. Look at his tutor's fear! Look at his sudden terror of the boy he ordered around every day. Look what power he wielded! In his mind he saw the Boros lieutenant's face, saw Oliver's, saw his mother's pity, and he roared at all of them; he was fire, he was light, he was more than all of them.The storm spun faster. He abandoned himself whole to the forbidden joy of light. It snapped and arced, lashing out, flowing wild around him. He laughed and drank the lightning _and then the world broke apart_

_a killing wind howls up the chasm beneath his feet, sliced apart on obsidian cliffs_

And then he was back in the Temple with light cascading from his fingertips. A whirling pillar of cloud descended from the storm, touched the mosaic floor. He heard nothing when it met the tile but seconds later the scream and crack of ceramic fought its way through the din. Cold terror struck through the delirium. Ral grabbed for the arena's warding spells

_ancient growths and the growth of ancients, in this place even the trees grow trees and the earth is_

but concentric glass walls were breaking in his mind and currents wrenched themselves from his

_time runs different, runs backwards, pools in hollows and valleys and flows down to the sea_

grasp. The spell grew unbounded

_chaos raw screaming wild uncr e a t e d_

drawing, drinking, draining. The arena spun around him. Ice hit him in the heart. He fell to his knees, barely registering the crack of bone on hard tile. One hand clawed at his chest as if it could tear out the roots of the spell. The rest of him felt heavy and cold as lead. Through watering eyes he saw his tutor fighting his way through the wind, one arm flung up to shield himself from the hail. The wind pressed Josef's protective bubble of still air nearly down to his skin, shredded it contemptuously behind him.

With the last of the air in his lungs Ral screamed, _"I can't stop it!"_

The sea and the sky and the obsidian wind--

Then Josef's hand struck his forehead and his sight went black.

 

* * *

 

They were talking again.

Ral sat with his back against the arch that braced their building against its neighbors and listened to the voices that carried from the parlor. Even in the warm night he had taken the time to drape a blanket around himself and another between him and the cold brick beneath. His heart still beat ragged in his chest and he thought he might never fully chase away that deadly, lingering chill.

"I don't know what to do," confessed his mother. "He's been acting so strange lately - maybe not just lately, maybe I just didn't notice it until it was too late."

"He's been missing?" asked the calm, dry voice of Temple Mother Sonja.

"He stays away from home for days at a time. He won't tell us where he's going or what he's doing," answered his father.

"A few times he's come home hurt," added his mother.

"Some filthy Rakdos damn near broke his arm, not that he'd say what happened," growled his father.

"How do you discipline him for this?" The voice he dreaded: Josef's heavy, blank certainty.

"We tried to keep him inside so he wouldn't get into another fight," said his mother. "But you can't lock Ral up, ever since he was little, he'll always find a way out."

"We think he's staying with those awful friends of his sometimes. Maybe at inns, but I don't know where he could be getting the coin for that," added his father.

Ral didn't need to see Josef to picture the disapproving frown he would be giving his parents. "A sterner hand might curtail such excess."

"Begging your pardon, but if you think that would work, you don't know my son," said his mother.

"I am well-familiar with--"

Mother Sonja's voice interrupted. "He always attends his mage-lessons, does he not, Skymaster?"

"Yes," admitted Josef. "The boy is consistent in that regard. But none other."

"He's growing up. We all had a tough time of it," asserted his father.

"Not all of us had the ability to manifest a cyclonic storm in the middle of a Temple casting arena."

Silence.

"He really..." ventured his mother.

Mother Sonja broke in. "Skymaster Josef and I have been observing Ral for some time. When he first showed magical potential, his heritage made its strength unremarkable. But that power is...still increasing."

His mother's voice, now perplexed. "Ral's past sixteen. He should have capped out his raw channeling abilities by now."

"He should have," agreed Mother Sonja. "He has not."

Ral heard teacups rattle. Josef cleared his throat. "When I heard a storm mage had manifested himself in the Eighth District, I came primarily to observe. I stayed because it quickly became clear he is exceptionally powerful, even for what I have learned of your family tradition. Certainly the strongest mage the Eighth District Temple has seen in a long time. I feared you would not understand the threat his abilities pose. I was unfortunately correct."

"My son is not a _threat,"_ snapped his father. Ral started upwards at his perch. He had never heard such a cold venom in his father's voice.

"We don't mean to disparage Ral's character," said Mother Sonja quickly. ""Please. We're all here because we care about Ral. We want the best for him. We all want to help."

Silence, and then a thin, heart-breaking sound. It took Ral a few seconds to understand that his mother was crying.

"He's in trouble, I know he is," she gasped out.

"He won't listen. We don't know how to get to him anymore," said his father.

"It's not your fault. You've done the best you could under the circumstances," said Mother Sonja kindly.

"How could you be expected to comprehend the workings of the divine, even a corrupted emanation?" said Josef stiffly. "Ral's actions are dictated by forces beyond your control. His younger brother shows no signs of similarly deviant behavior, yes?"

"Jaro's got his share of high spirits, but - it's true, he's never been as difficult as Ral."

"It is the unfortunate nature of Ral's magic that inclines him towards this disruptive, rebellious behavior. Your son has been dealt a difficult hand. Why the Lady chose him to bear this particular burden, we may never know."

"We can teach Ral control all we like. We can't force him to use it," said the Temple Mother. "But the Temple has rites that might help, if we can understand his particular case."

"What do - do you need to know?"

Josef cleared his throat. "Have you ever suspected Ral of being of unsound mind?"

The words froze Ral's blood almost as badly as the runaway spell. His breath came short and hot in his throat. No, no, no. Surely they didn't think he was - he wasn't lying, he wasn't making it up, it was the truth, he knew what he'd seen...

"You're asking if my boy's crazy?" His mother sounded genuinely confused.

"Incidents similar to the episode he suffered during New Year's service," said Josef patiently.

"He did have nightmares when he was little. That's what happened during New Year's, I'm sure of it. But lots of kids have nightmares," said his mother.

"Any fantasies he insists are real. Conversing with nonexistent entities. Hallucinations, or delusions."

Hesitation from his parents. Then his mother began. "When he was little - six or seven, maybe younger - he loved to draw pictures of imaginary places. Incredibly strange landscapes. Trees all the way to the horizon, monsters in open ocean. I thought maybe he had a future as a novel-writer. But - but he insisted they were real. That he'd seen them. He got angry when I tried to tell him they didn't exist."

"It wasn't like a child's game. Ral sincerely believed he'd seen these places," added his father.

"Only when he was young?"

"He stopped after a few years. I thought it was just a phase."

"But..." His father sounded so unsure; Ral felt a prickle of fear. "There are times when he loses his temper, and you just can't - it's like he's someone else." That sickening lead returned to Ral's gut. So _what_ if he got angry!? He had a lot of shit to be angry about! But the dark purple bruising across Rowan's face, how _afraid_ he was, and the fight on the roof when he'd gotten his scar, and...

"In my time with him I have observed...unsettlingly anomalous behavior," said Josef. "I too hoped it might be a temporary condition. But it has become more common, and the ba'al's corrupting hold on his soul will only worsen. I'm sure you will agree that the prospect of mental instability in such a mage is a grim one."

"Is that something that can happen?" asked his mother.

"It is, and it will. If left unfettered the ba'al's presence damages the mind. Soon he will be beyond the reach of even physical force. These words would be difficult for any parent to hear, but your son _must_ be taught the appropriate restraint and submission now, or he will never accept the Temple's law."

"If that's true, then - are you saying there's nothing we can do?"

The rustle of Mother Sonja's formal vestments. "The case of a rebellious storm mage is not unknown in Temple history. There are spells and blessings known to mages of purification meant to handle such a situation. The Skymaster and I seek your permission to perform a particular rite on Ral. We believe it will keep him from accidentally harming another, and help him adjust to his responsibilities."

"What is this rite?"

Josef took over. "We call it a Rite of Binding. It simply closes off a mage's gift from use for a period of time."

Ral's thoughts seized up. No. They wouldn't. They couldn't.

"Surely there's something else we can try first."

"This is not an irreversible process. You said yourself, the age when a boy becomes a man is a difficult one. Ral does not need the extra burden of his magic during this time."

"It's so drastic, though. Can we - I'd like a little time to think about it, if you could."

"I assure you, this the wisest course of action," said Josef.

"We'll speak of this again in a few days," said the Temple Mother, but Josef said, "The sooner we can--"

"Would you be so quick to decide if it was your son?" snapped his mother. "Just to do some weird magic on him that might be dangerous?"

Josef went uncharacteristically silent. Ral scrambled along the brick. The blanket slipped out from under him and tumbled down into the darkness. He pressed forward till he could peer through a crack in the parlor curtains. His tutor sat with his teacup raised halfway, frozen except for the tiny flutter around his mouth that Ral knew to fear.

Josef set the teacup back down. He cleared his throat and said, "I can only wish that such rites had been available to help my son."

"What - happened?"

"The storm is a mount that will not hesitate to throw its rider. One lapse in concentration and the damage can be catastrophic. In this case, fatal."

The room went silent. "I'm sorry," his mother finally hazarded. "We're sorry for your loss."

Josef had regained his usual utter blankness. "No harm is done; you did not know. What is important is that my son did not learn the necessary discipline and as a result his gift consumed him. At first I blamed his tutors. But as I came to understand the true nature of his abilities, I realized it was not their fault. The ba'al's touch has become quite rare. Long ago Tanit in her wisdom provided her faithful with the means to protect those who bear this mark. My son's death was her call to remember this. In her service I have recovered scrolls and grimoires lost in Temple archives for millennia. No student needs to suffer my son's fate. And no other student ever shall."

"And this is one of those lost rituals?"

"It is the first step. All it will do is keep Ral from accessing his magic. Think of it as blindfolding a patient whose eyes may be damaged by light. This is a kindness."

"I don't think Ral will see it that way."

"One day, he will. One day he will be a great mage, a credit to his family line and a pride of this Temple. Then, he will understand."

Ral clutched at the brick beneath him. His thoughts spun. _the sea and the sky and the obsidian wind--_ He'd hurt someone. Again. Maybe they were right. Maybe he shouldn't be allowed to have these powers.

"And you're certain it's reversible? That it won't hurt him?"

And...and maybe he _was_ crazy. He knew what he'd seen...but could his eyes and mind be lying to him? Maybe there were other delusions too, ones he hadn't uncovered yet. Maybe everyone else knew but they let him keep thinking it was real, the poor mad storm mage boy, such a shame...

"It leaves no lasting mark on the mage or their powers, only temporarily separates them. When Ral has matured enough to be trusted with such power - when he is both able _and willing_ to control his abilities - the binding will be removed."

He'd gotten angry again, he hadn't meant to hurt anyone, but he'd been so furious and then it was like waking up from a nightmare to see his erstwhile friend beneath him bleeding and begging him to stop, his own pulse still pounding in his ears, thick with that vicious glee, that thrill of power, oh, goddess, maybe he was crazy...

_It only separates them._

Impossible. No. Never.

Through the crack in the curtains Ral saw his mother and father give reluctant nods.

_No. They couldn't._

They were going to let it happen.

_This is a kindness._

They were going to take away his spark.

_I won't do it._ The thought boiled up within Ral with the same clarity that he had felt standing on that Selesnyan rooftop all those years ago. It had the weight of a fact, a consequence of the fundamental order of things. Anxiety burned into defiant rage. None of them were worth listening to. None of them understood what he could do, what he _was_. He was better than all of them, smarter and stronger and _better_ than _all of them,_ and he was through letting them hold him back! To hell with all of them! He was Ral Zarek and no one got to tell him what to do.

Jaro had been sent to Auntie Danika's so the adults could talk, so it didn't take long for Ral to gather his real possessions. He had barely unpacked from his last outing. But as he buckled the black leather satchel closed a stir of guilt managed to pierce his anger. He should... He didn't know when he might...

He found a scrap of paper and a pencil and scribbled a brief note: _I won't take the binding._ There. At least his parents wouldn't think he'd just wandered off. At least - now they'd know it was their fault.

Ral shoved open the window and climbed into the Ravnican night.

 

* * *

 

"Holy shit, _Ral?"_

Ral blinked and tried to move, but banged his knees almost immediately into a metal armrest. He recoiled back into a hunched ball.

"Ral, what the actual fuck." Ral raised his head slowly, searching for its source, and finally fixed on the confused face of Oliver Fong. The Izzet stared down at him with a look of utter astonishment in green eyes.

"G'mornin' Ol'ver," he mumbled. "Needed your chair. For sleeping on."

"Ral, what the hell are you doing in my lab? Also, how did you get in here?"

"Window," said Ral, and pointed vaguely upwards.

"Okay, well, still, what the hell are you doing here?" Irritation crept in around the edges of Oliver's expression. "If this is about Rowan..."

"No, no, it's not that," said Ral hastily. He uncurled a bit but halted when his spine protested. "I had to leave, I had to. I can't go home. I had to go somewhere, I can't--"

"Slow down, Ral. What happened? Did you have a fire? Is your grandma okay?"

"No. The house is fine, I just can't go back. Because of what they'll do to me."

Oliver's expression went suddenly serious. "What are they going to do to you."

"It's complicated."

Oliver crouched to Ral's eye level. Slowly, deliberately, he asked, "Is someone hurting you?"

"Oh - no, no, it's not like that. But it's bad.

"Bad enough for you to run away here."

"Yes. It's--" His throat locked up and he pressed a hand against the tears that threatened at the corners of his eyes.

Oliver straightened up with a resigned sigh. He looked, for the first time Ral had seen, utterly out of his depth.

"Cripes," he muttered. "I need coffee."

 

* * *

 

Ral wrapped his hands tightly around the steaming mug of coffee. It smelled just as bad as the stuff they brewed out in the tunnels, but at the moment his exhausted body would take what it could get.

Oliver sat down in a chair with his own mug and waited until Ral found a clear spot on the desk's surface to lean against. "Okay. Tell me what happened."

"I lied to you before. I'm really sorry, but I had to."

"About what?"

"My Da's not dead and I don't live with my grandma. I said that because my parents don't know I'm working here."

Oliver looked away from him and took a drink of his coffee, then another one. He set it down on the desk. "Ral, why did you lie to me?"

"Da said I couldn't go out to the worksites because I was sleeping through my Temple classes. But I want to and the Temple won't let me learn artificing. And I needed the money because sometimes I can't stay in the house because Ma or Da tries to ground me. So I lied. I'm sorry."

"Did you ever even work for Yelena?"

"That's all true, ask her, she'll tell you. I worked on her site for a whole year and she said I was smart and she told me you wanted an assistant. And I really did have to leave because of the gas lines." The tears threatened to return. "And now they want to take away my magic and I can't go home."

"Wait. Whoa. Back up for a second, Ral. What's this about magic? Who's 'they'?"

"The Temple. They're going to bind up my magic so I can't use it."

"Is that really something they can do?" Ral nodded. "Well....shit. Why?"

"I'm not a spark mage." Ral lifted the left sleeve of his work shirt. "I'm a storm mage."

Oliver let out a low whistle. "Now that's a burn."

"The lightning made it when I called it."

"You called down _lightning!?_ At _sixteen!?"_

"No, that happened when I was ten." Ral lifted one arm and let a bolt ripple along it. Blue arc-light reflected in Oliver's wide eyes. "The scar means I'm - tainted - by chaos. The Temple says I have to learn how to not let it out."

Oliver looked baffled. "This is one of those Tanish rain-magic things, isn't it."

"I guess. It's called ba'al. It's the force that - in the Cant it's what contaminates the world. It poisons the water that flows from the goddess and that's why there's death and pain and all that. And it's in me, that's where my magic comes from, so I'm not allowed to-- because I might hurt someone, and I did once, and I-- The Temple wants to bind it up so I don't hurt anyone. But I...I can't let them, I can't. It's part of me. Sometimes I think it is me, the real me, and everything else is just...skin." He ran out of words and buried his attention in his coffee mug, afraid to face Oliver, afraid to look away, afraid, afraid, afraid.

"Alright," said Oliver.

Ral looked up. "Alright - what? Alright you're not mad?"

"Oh, trust me, I'm still really fucking angry about what happened on the site. And I'm not thrilled you've been lying to me about your parents, either. But we'll deal with that later."

"You believe me?"

Oliver shrugged. "Well, if someone said I couldn't study mana theory or work on the amplifiers anymore, just because someone might get hurt - I'd be pretty upset."

"Thank you," said Ral quietly.

Oliver ran his fingers back through his hair and drained the last of his coffee. "Just stay out of sight until I explain the situation to Professor Ducci."

 

* * *

 

Professor Rafaella Ducci was a short stout woman with curly shoulder-length brown hair, piercing brown eyes, and strident opinions, all of which combined to give Ral the impression of a barrel that had come to life in order to berate people using the wrong grade of steel. She sat with Oliver at her left hand like a deputy.

"Ral, you can't stay here," she said. When Ral opened his mouth she cut him off with a wave. "It's not because of your magic. You're not a student and this isn't an inn. I don't have the coin to support you full-time."

"Then I can be a student."

"I just _said,_ I don't have the coin for another student. I barely have enough for _these_ students," said Professor Ducci, flapping a hand in the direction of the rest of the lab.

"Plus you've got to get an apprenticeship and pass Guild Trials for that. It takes years," said Oliver.

"Don't you have someone else you can stay with?" asked Ducci

"They'd just send me back to the Temple."

"You've got to know _someone_ who isn't Tanish," she said.

"What about your friends?" asked Oliver. "Are they all shitty friends like Rowan?"

"They kind of are," mumbled Ral. A thought struck him. "There's someone who - she's still Tanish, but I don't think she'd send me back. But I'm not sure where she lives."

"It's a start. What's her name?" asked the professor.

"Marzanna. She's a mage. She lives in the Tenth."

"What's she do? Is she Guild?" asked Oliver

"I know she takes Guild contracts, but she isn't in one."

"Wait," interrupted the professor. "Are you talking about Marzanna Zarek the steam-mage?"

"Maybe? She did a lot of fog spells."

The professor sat back. "I didn't realize you were that Zarek family."

"There's only one Zarek family," said Ral, puzzled.

"Statistically unlikely, but that's beside the point. You're actually related to her?"

"She's my grandmother."

Oliver gave a low whistle. "That sure explains a few things."

"What's that supposed to mean? I like Grandmother. She's nice."

"That's the first time I've ever heard the word 'nice' used to describe Mage Marzanna Zarek. But it's a start," said the professor. "Why don't we get you to her?"

"What if my mom and dad come to get me?"

"Ral, I don't know anything about the rest of your family, but I can tell you this: if Marzanna Zarek doesn't want you to leave, you're not leaving. So Oliver--" a significant look in his direction "--will figure out how to get you there this afternoon. Okay?"

"Okay."

 

* * *

 

Exhaustion caught up with him around noon and Ral slept through most of the trip to the Tenth District. Oliver shook him awake when their cab pulled up in front of the address the professor had gotten. Ral rubbed his eyes and stared upwards. A single long building occupied this entire side of the street, divided up into columns of bright, solid color. The painted lines marking off each - apartment? house? - had been defined with great care.

An unfamiliar man in a sleek, dark-blue outfit answered the door and Ral nearly hid behind Oliver, then scolded himself for acting like a kid. Oliver showed an elaborately-worked Guild sigil dangling from a pocket-chain and gave the man his name and they were, with some reluctance on the manservant's part, shown to a small room just inside the entrance. The man turned to go and Ral got up to follow him, but Oliver caught him by the shoulder. A few minutes later a tall woman with blue robes and short salt-and-pepper hair appeared in the doorway.

"Good afternoon, Honored Mage," said Oliver. "My name is Oliver Fong. I've, um, you should have gotten a message from my professor? Professor Rafaella Ducci?"

"Indeed I did, and this had better--"

It looked like her. It sounded like her. Ral moved out from behind Oliver and the moment he did she broke off and said, "Ral!"

"Hello, Grandmother," said Ral. His throat tightened unexpectedly and he blinked back tears, thinking _don't be ridiculous._

Marzanna spread her arms. "Come here, my boy." Ral let himself hide in her embrace for a moment before pulling away, although she kept an arm slung across his shoulders and asked, "Are you all right?"

"Fine, I guess." Ral stared at the polished hardwood floor, not trusting himself to look her in the face.

"He said he couldn't go home," offered Oliver. "Something about the Temple, and binding up magic. I'm sorry, I'm not Tanish, I don't know your customs."

"Binding up--" She looked down at Ral. "Tell me they didn't try to seal your mage-gift."

Ral managed to nod.

"Mother's tits. Those utter dunces." She looked back up. "Student. What's your name again?"

"Uh, Oliver. Oliver Fong, Honored Mage. I work for Rafaella Ducci in the Eighth."

"You've done me a great favor, Oliver Fong, and I owe you in kind. We'll be in touch." She tightened her grip across Ral's shoulders. "Ral, have you eaten yet? Let's find you something to eat."

"Bye Oliver," Ral choked out. "See you later." Oliver brightened and gave him an enthusiastic wave that drew an answering gesture from Ral. Then his grandmother steered him down the hall and into a dim, richly-furnished memory. Scraps from a distant childhood flashed through his mind. He knew that vase, yes - and that mirror in the hall, he remembered it being so high up, and now it sat at eye-level. Grandmother steered him silently to the door that led, it turned out, to a small but well-appointed kitchen. When they were both seated at the kitchen table with cups of tea and a plate of tiny lemon tarts, Marzanna Zarek said, "Tell me what happened."

"I'm getting sick of telling everybody what happened," mumbled Ral. A smoke-grey cat with golden eyes had stared Ral down when they entered, but now seemed to have approved his presence, or at least judged him harmless enough to curl up on an empty chair and return to sleep.

"Then you ought to have written it down," said his grandmother crisply. "They wanted to use a Rite of Binding on you. Yes?"

Ral managed to nod. His throat closed up again and he fought down the painful lump of tears wedged within it.

"Why?"

"I - I was doing an exercise, and I lost the spell, and I - I could have hurt a lot of people, and I almost...Josef says I would have died too, the storm would have drained me dead."

Grandmother, to his surprise, nodded at this. "A powerful spell that runs out of control can kill its caster. It sounds like that's what happened."

"And I've been trying in lessons, but they said I couldn't work on the system, and I--" The knot in his throat swallowed his words and he ducked to hide the tears he could no longer stop, but a gulping sob still forced its way out. The grey cat raised its head at the sound. "I'm cursed," he gasped out. "My magic hurts people, okay!? I nearly killed another boy once and I hurt my friend and even though I didn't mean it she never wanted to be my friend again after. I lost control and I almost killed my teacher and I destroyed a casting arena. The Temple is right. They should seal up my magic."

"Listen to me. _Ral."_ He sniffed and looked up. "Listen to your grandmother. You are not cursed or corrupted or whatever other damn fool bullshit the Temple's told you. Any magical gift can be dangerous and yours is no exception. It's just a little more dramatic, is all." Marzanna sat back and scoffed at some invisible target. "This whole affair is ludicrous. Lady knows I respected Yevgeny's right to take Natalka and Danika with him back to the Eighth, even if it didn't make a speck of sense. But a power like yours can't be denied, and smothering it will only make it worse."

"But I--"

"No more buts. You've had an awful day. You're going to have some dinner and then you're going to sleep. We'll talk about this in the morning."

 

* * *

 

Ral woke up face-down in blue velvet. It took a few seconds of flailing confusion before he remembered where he was. Grandmother's guest-room bed was absurdly large and soft enough that he found it difficult to traverse. Morning sun fell through a skylight. He listened for a moment, but heard only a deafening silence. Sonic wards blocked out the noise of the neighbors and Ral found himself straining to find that continual background murmur. He had the nagging sensation of forgetting something important. Then again, he'd just packed most of his worldly possessions into a bag. That might account for the unsettled feeling.

Ral dumped his satchel out and found the least Temple-related clothing he had brought, then went looking for a bathroom. When he descended to the ground floor, four strangers stood in the foyer saying complex goodbyes to Grandmother. The door closed behind them; she turned away and for a moment he glimpsed an intensely serious expression on her face. But when she saw him she lit up and said, "Ral! Let's have tea."

Ral had yet to see anyone inside the house other than Grandmother and her stoic manservant, but somehow when he entered the kitchen breakfast had been cooked and laid out on the sideboard. "Who was that?" he asked.

"Eat first. Then questions." Grandmother popped a slice of melon into her mouth and went to heat the kettle herself while Ral filled a plate. His stomach growled at the sight and he grudgingly conceded his grandmother might be right about the food thing. Grandmother's smoke-grey cat jumped up onto the table when Ral finally sat down with breakfast. It looked at him, at his bacon, then back at him. Ral crumbled off a corner and dropped it in front of the cat. "Keep quiet, you," he whispered as it devoured the smoked meat. "I doubt Grandmother wants you eating on the table."

The kettle whistled. Grandmother brought it over to the table and set it on its iron trivet, then crossed her arms and frowned at the cat. "Off with you, Char." The cat mewed plaintatively. "Don't even start. You know you're not allowed up here."

The cat mewed again, butted Ral's forearm with its head, then jumped off the table with a soft thump and meandered away. Grandmother busied herself measuring tea into the pot while Ral busied himself stuffing food into his face as quickly as possible. At last she set his cup in front of him and said, "It's time we discussed some things."

Ral swallowed and said, "Who was that?"

"Those were some friends of mine who study magic. I asked them to come over so we could talk about your gift."

"What did they say?" Ral couldn't quite manage to keep the apprehensive quiver from his voice.

"That most of what I suspected is true." Marzanna hesitated in the act of scooping sugar into her cup. "Ral, do you feel up to talking about this right now? The last couple days have been hard on you."

"I'm fine." Marzanna gave him a look of palpable skepticism. "Well, okay. But I want to talk about it."

"I understand if you just want to rest."

"No. I want to know." His heart beat fast in his chest and his stomach suddenly wanted to reject the meal he'd just devoured.

"Very well, then. Your powers aren't a curse. They're a throwback."

Ral had prepared for happiness, or rage, or fear. He hadn't thought of confusion. "A what?"

_"Throwback,_ Ral. Ancestral. Archaic. Living reminder of a past some parts of the Temple would rather forget. If those backwater idiots had admitted what you really are, they might have even been able to help you. Apparently I gave them too much credit. I suppose, to be fair, there hasn't been a mage like you born in a long time."

"But there are other storm-mages. Josef - knew one."

"You're not a storm-mage."

Ral dropped his fork with a clatter. "Everyone keeps telling me I'm one kind of mage, and then I'm another! Can't you make up your mind?"

Grandmother pursed her lips and took a sip of tea. "Alright, my boy. You're not _just_ a storm-mage."

"Fine." Ral retrieved his fork. "Then what else am I?"

"An elementalist. A real one, the kind that hasn't shown up for millennia. Don't look at me like that, I know what I'm talking about. You know how long it takes even an Izzet apprentice to keep a steady spark? And here's my brilliant grandson trying his hardest to hold back. For a--"

"I've never heard of an elementalist."

_"For a while now,_ some - friends - and I have been studying what's happening to the city now that the Guildpact is gone."

"The friends who visited this morning?"

"Yes, they're part of it. You have to understand: the Guildpact didn't keep Ravnica peaceful, it kept Ravnica _stable_. Ever since its creation our civilization has stayed more or less intact. In a lot of ways that's good. In others... The world's meant to evolve, but we didn't let it. With the Guildpact gone, all that change - ten thousand years of pent-up deviation - is breaking loose. That has consequences."

"Great. Fine. What does that have to do with me?"

"Drink your tea and let me finish, my boy. If you want to keep the world the same, you have to get rid of anything powerful enough to change it. That includes certain kinds of profound magic, abilities that manipulate basic principles of existence; the Guildpact suppressed them. But now the Guildpact's gone and the elementalists are coming back. The Boros have a pair of fire-mages they have to hide up on Parhelion, it's the only place safe for them. Simic caught it early but they're attributing it to their grafting experiments. Even Selesnya's noticed their best lifeweavers bending back towards true animists. And you're one of the old lightshapers, I'm certain of it."

"Like...Nes'Tefer?"

"Who?"

"Nes'Tefer Illuminated. The Pact War mage."

"Oh. Probably, yes. I'd have to check the archive to be sure. Ral, I have to be honest with you: I've suspected the true nature of your gift ever since you were ten. But your mother... Things didn't exactly - go well - when Yevgeny left with the girls. I thought it would be best if I stayed away from you. I never counted on the Temple's own mages handling this so stupidly." Grandmother looked into her mug of tea with the closest thing to a regretful expression Ral had ever seen her wear. "I'm sorry I didn't intervene sooner."

"I'm sorry you didn't, too," said Ral.

Grandmother looked up with a measure of surprise and something that was almost pain, but quickly reclaimed her usual air of slightly amused calm. "Well, you're here now."

"Hooray for me," said Ral. "Now fucking what?"

Grandmother sighed. "Now we attempt to find you a tutor."

"What-- No! I just left-- I'm not--"

"You've already had one storm spell run out of control. Repressing your power has already led to disaster. Don't you think ignoring it will only lead to worse?"

"You can teach me."

"I wish I could. But I don't have experience with the kind of magic you need to learn."

"But - if I don't have the Temple, and--" _and I'm not going back_ "--and if I'm the only one, then there's no one I can learn from anyways."

"Which is why it's about time we got you set up with the Guild."

Ral nearly choked on his tea. Hot liquid scalded the inside of his mouth and nose. "I can't join a _Guild._ You have to be born to - and the Selesnyans already--"

"Are you a mage?"

"Yes?"

"Are you Natalka's brilliant boy, who started reading when he was barely two years old, whose parents couldn't stop boasting about him?"

_They did?_ A hot fist clenched around his heart. "Yes."

"Then you can join a Guild."

Ral thought of the round sigil on Yelena's vest and the spread of red wings across the sky. "Then - the Izzet," he declared. "I want to join the Izzet League."

"Obviously. The first step will be to get you an apprenticeship. That boy Fong seemed amenable, but we ought to try for something in the Tenth. Then you can start preparing for the entrance exams."

"Obviously?"

"Ral, you are my brilliant brilliant grandson, but sometimes you truly do not pay attention. It takes about five minutes of talking to you to know where you belong, and to know you'd be damn good at it. Fong wouldn't have kept you on otherwise. Izzets don't do things just to be polite."

"Oh."

Marzanna's long face pulled down into a sour expression. "And if anyone's in a position to notice the re-emergence of pre-Guildpact traits, it's the blasted Firemind. Once he figures out what you really are, he'll be itching to make use of you."

Ral folded his arms. "I don't care what he wants. I'm not letting someone else take advantage of me."

"The Firemind will want you trained as well as possible. So, for the moment, you two have the same goal. Okay?" Ral frowned, but gave a grudging nod. "No need to play along with him after you've gotten what you wanted. But I would warn you, the dragon's reputation isn't just the product of Izzet ego. Being useful to Niv-Mizzet is much better than the alternative."

"So...I have to get Niv-Mizzet to let me in."

"Heavens, no. With luck the dragon won't notice you till you make Guildmage. The League has open Guild Trials. Written and oral exams, plus a practical. You've got to pass all three just to be considered."

"I remember. Oliver talked about them. He said people study for years."

"He's right. Most of the other applicants will have been preparing for at least that long. You have a lot of ground to make up."

"I know lots of--"

"I'm sure you do. But you need to know more. Lots of the other students will have rich families that paid for Guild tutors and sent them to different apprenticeships. They'll already know lots of people, and they'll have an idea what's on the exams. You won't."

"That's not fair."

"It's not fair. And it's definitely not easy. You're very, very smart, Ral, but smart only goes so far. The rest of the way is a hell of a lot of hard work, and that's up to you."

Ral nearly laughed. As if he hadn't been working hard until now? He'd endured lessons that left him nauseous and cross-eyed with fatigue. He'd taken everything the Temple could throw at him and still found a way to do all the things they said he couldn't. Whatever burden he was shouldering by trying to join the Izzet League couldn't possibly be worse than what he'd already been subjected to. "I can do it," he told his Grandmother. "I can handle it."

"Then it's settled. I'll send out a message and see who's looking for help in the Tenth," she declared.

"What do I do?"

"You get some sleep. And eat something. Look at you, you're thin as a stick." Ral must have scowled, because she added, "There's a library in my study. I'm sure you can find something in there to keep yourself occupied for a few days."

Ral finally pinned down that nagging sense of forgetting that had dogged him since he woke: it was Saturday morning and here he was still at home. He hurriedly drained the last of his tea and asked, "Where's the Temple here?"

"I can't say I'm certain where it is," said Grandmother, sounding surprised. "Land prices around here are orders of magnitude above the Eighth. I don't know where they managed to find a spot."

"Don't you go to service?"

Grandmother laughed. "Why in heaven would I go to service? The faithful don't care for me, they've made that quite clear, and I've no use for them. Why bother going to another Temple and dealing with the same tedious bullshit?" Then her expression contorted and she stammered, "But - if you want to go, we can find a cab, I'm sure someone knows where--"

"No. I don't want to go. You're - you're right." Ral pointedly ignored the deep ache that plucked at his chest at the idea, the disoriented sense of loss. "There's no reason to deal with them anymore."

 

* * *

 

The blob of gauze flopped loose against his right shoulder and exposed the dark brown of dried blood. Ral pulled off the rest of the makeshift dressing, wiped the scrape clean with a wetted cloth, and gingerly applied the painkilling salve. Or at least tried to; it was harder than he'd expected to do it with one hand. He finally got a fresh dressing to stick and turned his attention to his right wrist. That required a proper splint from the medkit he kept under the sink in the guest-room's bathroom. He managed to wrap it in place, held up his wrist, and experimentally twisted it back and forth. Twinges of pain, but nothing severe. Good. In truth his pride stung more than the sprain. Vicky had told him not to try unfastening that joint with the damn pipe wrench, and he'd done it anyway, and now the most painful part was having no one but himself to blame.

After he put the medkit away he decided that he'd earned a snack and headed downstairs. This late at night shadowy silence reigned in Grandmother's townhouse. In the kitchen Ral shooed Char off the counter, found an orange in the fruit bowl, petted an offended Char, and peeled it as he walked back up to the third floor. The cat followed him up to the second floor, but then trotted purposefully off into the hallway. Curious, he followed. Halfway down a mage-light sent soft yellow beams out through the crack beneath the door to Grandmother's study. Char nudged it open with her head and sauntered in without pause. Ral stood in the darkened hallway with his orange and felt guilt flare in his chest. Working this late; she still hadn't found a new scribe, then, not since Ral had started his proper apprenticeship. Actually voicing any such concerns would draw a quick, "I've managed to survive thus far, young man," but he still regretted not having time to at least help Grandmother out, and he'd have even less when classes started. At least that wasn't for another couple of months. Vicky had filed the paperwork to sponsor him last week, but apparently he had to wait for the Izzet League's odd internal calendar to come back around before he could join a starting cohort.

Ral finished climbing to the third floor, ate the last of his orange, wiped his hands clean, and climbed into bed. He rolled over onto his side to keep his wrist free; the salve had finally begun to dull the sting of his newest lab-related injury. Had to get started early tomorrow so they could get the thermal vacuum chamber to themselves. He slipped into sleep midway through deciding which tools to bring.

He woke with a peculiar snag in his throat and sat up. The dim and distant glow that made it through the skylight said it was still night, but some part of his brain had dragged him awake. He cleared his throat and stared around himself. Then he realized he could see the shafts of secondhand city-light sparkling in a fine haze, and the burn in his throat swelled into a wheezing cough. Smoke. Fire. Adrenaline lanced through his body. He bolted out of bed, grabbed his satchel, stuffed it full of as much as he could find within reach. Scrambled to pull on pants, any sort of pants, and a shirt. He made it down from the third floor to the first in record time and burst out into the hall in time to hear a resounding, "Oh, for fuck's sake," echo back from the front of the house.

Ral slowed his pace. When he approached the front door Grandmother's manservant appeared out of the shadows and Ral froze. The man - his name was Felipe, and those were about the only words he had exchanged with Ral in the past eight months - had a naked short-sword in one hand and a strange whip-like weapon in the other. Ral opened his mouth, but the words _Why are you armed and standing in the hallway in the middle of the night, also please don't stab me_ jammed up in his throat. Fortunately when Felipe saw his face he only nodded and stepped back into his concealment.

Ral closed his mouth and tried to smother the instinct to run, and then the voltage that wanted to scorch the air around him. The temperature around him dropped and he could feel the air drying up as something pulled the moisture from it. He followed the streamer of dampness into the streetside vestibule just off the door. Grandmother Marzanna stood with her hands on her hips at the center of an inch-thick blanket of fog coating every surface in the small room. A bright blue mage-light burned just above her left shoulder. Mist condensed on the fine ash drifting in the air and Ral coughed at the burn of smoke in his throat.

"Grandmother?" he ventured.

Marzanna whirled in surprise. "Oh, good heavens. Ral. I'm sorry that woke you."

"What happened?"

She sighed in dramatic annoyance. Curls of fog drifted from her mouth when she exhaled. She stepped to the vestibule's wide street-level window and inspected a shattered pane of glass. "Firebomb, looks like. I'll have the glazier in again, ugh. I might as well keep her on retainer."

"But - is everything okay? Are you okay? Are they going to come back?" A handful of sparks crackled between his fingers.

"Perfectly fine, dear."

"Should we call the Boros, or, or, are they going to try again, or--"

"Ral, calm down. There's nothing to worry about."

_"How is there nothing to worry about!?"_

"Felipe, please prepare the study, and set up as you like," called his grandmother. "We're going to be working late tonight." Marzanna's manservant gave a slight bow and departed down the hall. "Ral, come and have some tea."

"That's your answer for everything!" said Ral as he followed her into the kitchen.

"Because I'm old enough to know most things look better from the other side of a cup of tea." Grandmother lit the flame beneath the kettle. "As long as no one's bleeding, it'll keep. There ought to be a few sweets left in the icebox," she added.

Getting the little lemon tartlets out of the icebox and onto a plate without exacerbating his injuries took Ral long enough that when he returned to the table his grandmother had already set a cup of steaming liquid in front of him. He opened his mouth to speak, but she frowned and said, "Ral, what did you do to your wrist?"

"Lab," said Ral succintly. "Don't change the subject. Someone just tried to set the house on fire!"

"Pssh, there was never any danger of a real fire. House wards took care of that. And I'd have to be pretty badly off before I couldn't conjure a dampening spell that simple."

"Then why the fuck did someone throw a firebomb through your window in the middle of the night!?"

"Language, Ral." Marzanna Zarek steepled her fingers and stared intensely into the middle distance. "I assume it was meant to be a warning."

"Is it..." The words stuck in Ral's throat and he drank his tea to shake them loose. "Is it someone from the Temple? Because of me?"

His grandmother's attention snapped back to him. "Lady, no! No, no. Perish the thought. This is just politics."

_"Politics!?"_

"Politics, and idiots. Unfortunately, idiots with firebombs." Ral wondered if it were his imagination or if his grandmother had really just shrugged at the idea. "I'd hoped they wouldn't press the matter, but, well, they can't be left running around if they're going to behave like this. I'll have to send a few messages tonight. And-- oh." All at once her expression dropped first into pain, then into sorrow. "Ral, it might be time you found quarters of your own."

Ral straightened, bristling. "What? Why?"

"This is the Tenth, and Guilds play for keeps. I'm about to set some things in motion. I don't want you anywhere near it."

"I'm not scared."

"I am. You've got a wonderful life ahead of you, my boy. I won't let some entanglement of mine ruin it."

"I like living with you."

"And I love having you. But if they're going to be stupid about it, then my home isn't safe, and that's simply a fact."

Ral slumped in his chair. The late hour weighed suddenly on his shoulders. He took a tartlet and mumbled, "I'm tired of moving."

"I know, I know. But you might like having your own place. You can live with the other Izzet applicants."

"They live together?"

"Some of them, yes. It's not cheap to live in the Tenth. Lots of apprentices pool their money to rent group apartments. Then they can live near their classes and study together."

Ral washed down the last of his tartlet with tea. "But... I don't know if I can live in - with other people."

"You've been saving up your pay, yes?"

"Yes."

"Then you ought to have enough to get your own room." Felipe reappeared in the kitchen doorway. Grandmother stood. "Sleep on it, my boy. We'll ask around tomorrow."

"And - but--" Ral turned his teacup around and around in his hands. "But... What if they don't like me?"

"They'll love you, Ral. Just be your charming self."


	10. All Roads

_"Zarek!_ Get the fuck up!"

The wadded-up tunic struck Ral square in the face just as he was blinking in the sudden light. He ripped the fabric away and mumbled, "Fuck off, and fuck you."

"Get up, man. Multivar fluxions are calling," ordered the voice that had thrown the tunic.

Ral squinted and shaded his eyes with one hand till he could make out the fuzzy shape of one of his floormates. "Fuck off, Gav. 'm not going."

Gavril planted his hands on his hips. "That's what last-night-you told me morning-you was gonna say. And last-night-you told me to tell morning-you fuck you, go to bed like a sane person and this won't happen."

"I was _working."_ Sudden fear sent Ral groping around the couch till he found a single sheet of paper covered in equations front and back. It had a few creases from where he had apparently fallen asleep on it, but was otherwise intact. Relief. He tried to flatten the creases and said, "Get fucked."

"Don't make me get Jenna's speakers."

"You wouldn't."

"I definitely will."

"There is no way your lazy ass is dragging those damn things all the way over here just to boot me out of the common room."

"There is if the alternative is trying to stay awake in exam review by myself. One more lecture, man. Get the fuck up."

Ral leaned back with a groan and a curse, his work abandoned in his lap. Eventually he would learn that if you stayed up all night you would be tired in the morning, right? Eventually his brain would finally make the connection between going to bed at a reasonable hour and not feeling like death the next day. Eventually. He rubbed his forehead as if he could forcibly evict the fatigue. "Alright, alright. Fuck you, get out, let me get my bag."

The early-morning sun had not yet dispelled the winter chill that lurked in the streets of the Tenth, but fortunately one of the Izzet Guildhall that hosted review sessions was only a block from their run-down apartment building. That proximity, more or less the only quality to recommend it, meant the building had played host to generations of Izzet hopefuls. The walls had the scorchmarks to prove it. Somehow it had picked up the nickname "The Vents," and by extension that made Ral and Gav venters, apprentices on the long haul to attempting Guild Trials.

Review skimmed some ten different topics in an hour as everyone in the session kept trying to derail it to focus on whatever particular area of study they felt they were weakest in. Ral scanned the audience while he waited for the lecturer to finally get around to his questions. "Where's Jenna?" he asked.

"Jenna is forty-two hours into Operation Sleep Forever," said Gavril.

"She's seriously still doing it?"

"You mean, is she seriously still sleeping for forty-eight hours straight? Yes. Is she seriously going to then stay awake for a solid thirty-six more? Who the hell knows."

Then the lecturer called for anyone wanting to review statistics and Ral had to concentrate on fighting for his own share of class time. No one wanted to be the first to leave the exam review session, and it was hours before they exited the building. Ral heard a distant bell strike noon and, sure enough, as they approached The Vents a pulse of sound boomed outwards and shook the snow off several nearby roofs.

"Okay, so Jenna's up," observed Gavril.

"So is everyone else," said Ral.

Jenna's speaker system had so far been the cause of no fewer than five visits from local Azorius patrollers, each of which ended the exact same way: with Jenna smiling sweetly and asking to see their writ of confiscation, and the officers having to reluctantly admit that no, they did not, technically, have one. "Because it's not magical, and therefore not illegal," Jenna would say. "Go away now." In truth the Azorius themselves wanted nothing to do with The Vents even when the building wasn't emitting physically-destructive levels of noise, but the neighbors tended to complain until the precinct lawkeeper at least pretended to make an effort. Ral had heard New Prahv had finally initiated proceedings to make the system illegal, but it would be at least another year before they amended the appropriate subsection. Apparently when the relevant statutes had been drafted no one had imagined making _that much noise_ without the use of magic. Ral doubted the revision would make any difference; by this point The Vents had absorbed the system into its bizarre infrastructure, and it didn't much matter what the Azorius thought. The moment they changed the law, The Vents would find a way around it. Just another artificing problem to be solved.

Jenna herself had to be awake if the system was running, since nobody trusted it not to set itself or its surroundings on fire otherwise. Personally Ral thought Jenna's presence _increased_ the risk of disaster, but at least if she was around maybe she'd get set on fire first and everyone would have someone to blame. As they climbed the stairs one final pulse of sound made all the wood creak and buzz under their feet, flushing out anyone who had somehow managed to sleep through the first one. By the time they reached their floor the vibration had died away into the general shuffle and bang of The Vents waking up. Jenna was closing the door to her room and stretching her arms above her head.

"Hey guys," she said. "How was review?"

"I had this weird feeling I'd heard it all before," said Gavril.

"Are you seriously still planning to stay awake till Practicals?" asked Ral.

"It'll be fine. I've been clocked out for two days, I've got enough in the battery," said Jenna.

"That battery does not do what you think it does."

"It works fine!"

"I'm not saying it won't keep you from sleeping. I'm saying it also won't keep you from hiding under your desk, convinced the world is about to end."

"That was _one time."_

"Personally, that's one more time than I'd prefer," said Ral.

"You're just jealous," said Jenna with a dismissive wave. "I'm getting breakfast."

Jenna wandered off in the direction of the floor's shared kitchen. Ral hid his annoyed frown. All right, so what if he sort of wished he had one of the experimental sleep batteries that Jenna had managed to score from her lab for "testing purposes"? It was probably better that he didn't. Stupid thing was a prototype anyway. Didn't work right. Whatever.

Gavril nudged him in the arm and said, "Stats in the common room?"

"Later," said Ral. "Got some new hardware this morning."

"You cannot be serious. Trials start tomorrow! Leave the mystery project alone for one night."

"Can't. Need it for Trials."

"Please tell me you didn't try to build your own sleep battery."

"Oh, goddess, no," blurted Ral.

"Because if the two of you go insane at the same time I'm going to burn everything I own and join the Gruul."

"Go work on your stats," said Ral, and started down the hall towards his own room.

When he finally remembered to take a break some few hours later, he wandered into the kitchen, briefly surprised at the absence of the smell of oil and hot metal. He dug out another ration of the communal meal they'd cooked and frozen for Trials week and put it on the stove to heat. Then he slumped into a chair at the long table. In the corner of his vision Alon fiddled with something laid out on the counter. Ral raised his head to look. All along the countertop bunches of dark purple grapes had been sealed into different types of bags.

"Alon, why are all the grapes in bags," asked Ral.

Alon put down his roll of tape. "So I have this theory," he began.

"Never mind," said Ral. Alon looked crestfallen, so he added, "Come on, after Trials." Alon made a noise halfway between a curse and a sigh. "Pretty much," agreed Ral.

Alon dropped the last bag into the row and left the kitchen. Ral continued staring blankly at the empty space where he'd been. There had to be a way to do the transfer in one junction. He just wasn't seeing it. If he could get the cooling vanes down into the middle, he might have enough room to...

"Zarek?" He looked up. Sasan had come into the kitchen. "Your stuff's burning." Ral cursed and scrambled for a plate. By the time he had rescued his food, wincing at the heat, Sasan was already seated at the table with one of Alon's brown glass bottles and a cup of something that smelled alcoholic.

Ral set down his plate across from her. "Slumming it with the venters?" he asked.

"There was a Nicholai incident," grumbled Sasan.

"Oh, fuck. What's it this time."

"Apparently Io saw him awake and cooking real early in the morning. Which is weird, but, fine, except then it started to smell and we realized he was _rendering glue."_

"Are you fucking kidding me?"

"Swear to any god you care to name, he was cooking down actual glue on the actual stove in our actual kitchen. Whole floor bailed. I'm not going in there without a gas mask till at least tomorrow." Sasan drank. "I heard you're going for Trials."

"You heard correctly."

"You know you can take another year. Most 'prentices do at least four before they go for Guild Trials. And that's just the first attempt, I had to go twice before I passed all three exams."

"I know."

"Nobody would think you're chickening out."

"I know. I know what you're trying to say. I don't want to wait any longer."

"Trials aren't anything like the kind of crap they give you in class."

"It's all right. I've got a plan."

"You've got a plan? Oh gods." Sasan topped up her drink. "Please tell me what you cooked up this time, I want to get out of the blast radius."

Ral manifested a grin. "Come on, you like my crazy ideas."

Sasan jabbed a finger in his direction. "I like your _good_ crazy ideas, Zarek. Not the bad crazy ones that end in tears. Tears and arrests."

"This is a good one. It's good crazy. Would I go for Trials if I weren't certain I'd pass?"

" 'Things Zarek is certain of' and 'things that are actually true' are provably not the same category."

"You're just going to have to wait and see."

Sasan grumbled at that and took another drink. She looked around the kitchen. "Why are all the grapes in bags?"

"Alon has this theory," said Ral.

 

* * *

 

Due to some ancient tradition - and possibly the strength of the local warding spells - Izzet League Guild Trials took place at Nivix itself. Not a particularly _good_ part of Nivix; an old-fashioned part firmly confined to ground level, whose dusty stone floors and pink marble arches had clearly seen better days. But it was Nivix, and Ral nearly tripped in the middle of the street trying to watch all the graceful spires floating overhead as they traced slow, enigmatic patterns around the central tower, bolts of mana snapping between them with distant crackles.

The written exam came first, a full day of alternately freezing and roasting in the badly-ventilated auditorium, scraping up everything he'd ever learned about fluxions and mana dynamics and chemical reactions. At the end of the day Gav and Alon managed to get drunk. Ral had a pint and retreated to his room after borrowing Gav's good soldering iron.

Oral exams came second. Now Ral had to talk, talk for hours. He got lucky: the examiner asked him about one of the topics he'd studied. But every time the examiner asked him a question Ral had to suppress a flare of annoyance, and he could hear his own voice becoming more and more defensive. Chalk scraped across the blackboard as he tried to describe the relevant equations, but irritation clouded his thoughts and he stumbled over the symbols. By the time the examiner let him out most of the other venters had already gone back.

"How're you feeling?" asked Gav as they compared notes afterwards.

"I'm pretty sure I tanked Orals," said Ral.

"You couldn't have missed that much."

"I finished a lot of it. But it sounds like I didn't get enough, and I don't think the examiner liked me much. I'll have to make it up in Practical."

"Your secret plan for Practical."

"My secret plan for Practical," agreed Ral.

"Man, I really hope you know what you're doing."

 _Me too._ "Course I do," said Ral with a grin. "It'll be great."

An hour later Ral sat waiting for a soldered joint to cool, still going over all the mistakes he'd made during Orals in his head. Overall he'd done well. But winning entrance to the League required doing more than well. Maybe Gav was right. Maybe he should just do the construction Practical like everyone else did instead of demonstrating the project he'd labored over for months. But - once he could show them who he was, they would understand that he shouldn't be judged by the same standards as the others. Shouldn't be lumped together with the crowd. And the project was good. He knew it was good.

But here in the quiet of his room, leaning away from the stark glow of the work-lamp, he let the other side of that thought in: what if it wasn't good _enough?_ He slumped in his chair. Weariness settled around him like a heavy cloak. What if he failed? And everyone else got in, and left him behind, and he tried year after year and never did any better, like the older applicants who still ghosted Vent halls, promising that this time, this time they'd make it? What would he do then, go back to the Eighth?

That thought struck a sudden deep chord. All at once loneliness opened a sinkhole within him that swallowed up his world. He wanted to be back home. With his grandmother, with his mother and father, even with his annoying little brother. With people who didn't want anything from him. He wanted paczki and the sweet noodle kugel no one in the Tenth knew how to make. He wanted to close his eyes during Saturday service with the Cant lulling him to sleep - oh, how he wanted to go to _sleep,_ and to wake without fearing whatever crushing deadline waited for him today, without dreading the pressure, the demands, the stress, the endless drive to stretch himself further and further, the endless unshakeable fear whispering _what if it isn't enough?_ Fatigue burned between his eyes, at the back of his mind. He'd long ago passed through the brief adrenaline high of a single night's missed sleep, passed into the leaden exhaustion beyond.

Lady, but he was tired.

The 'scope lit up green. Ral sat up straight, squared his shoulders, and started on the next junction.

 

* * *

 

Ral hadn't slept much.

The wind blew ice-cold down the streets as he and his pack of fellow venters made their way back to the examination hall. The tall buildings on either side focused it down into a single brutal gust. Tiny pellets of snow stung any exposed skin. Ral leaned forward as far as he could without risking a fall. He wasn't certain he had the energy to get back up. Nausea lurked in his gut and weariness had mutated into a numb detachment. The weight of his project case made a hot stripe of pain across his shoulders and banged against the small of his back whenever he took a step; but he was too tired to really react to it. At least there was that. When they finally joined the crowd of other applicants waiting to be let in to the hall the press of bodies cut the wind and warmed him up a bit, and he could feel sensation returning to his fingertips. Ral's thoughts stirred in a dark, doubting spiral. What if he'd read the rules wrong, if they'd changed, if the committee never gave him a chance; if he messed it up, if he hurt someone, if they didn't understand... In his disconnection it took him a few seconds to register the raised voices around him, the gestures and rapid whispers. When he did, he followed the pointing fingers up to the nearer part of Nivix's dynamic architecture.

At first all he saw were the same heavy clouds that lay over the rest of the sky. And then he noticed the glow. The hair went up on the back of his neck and an arc snapped off his left hand, but nobody noticed, because they were all staring upwards now: towards the sight that slammed Ral back a decade and more, to a distant rooftop and a rising storm, to a flaming silhouette tearing down through the clouds--

The dragon was coming.

Niv-Mizzet plummeted through the mist with the speed of a cannonball and the grace of a dancer, navigating between all the meshed components of his Guild-Hall as he were a part of the mechanism himself. He rolled with the flick of a ruby wingtip and curled out of his dive several stories above them to sail out into the city beyond. A nimbus of golden flame lingered in his wake and the same fire ignited in Ral's blood. Memory burst awake and gathered potential scorched the air around him. He clenched one fist instinctively, braced himself. Ready for a fight.

Because it _was_ a fight, wasn't it? One great fight he'd picked with the world itself, with the inscrutable bulk of existence. Niv-Mizzet had lived for fifteen thousand years and ruled the Izzet League atop a tower hung from the clouds; but he waged the same war. Every line of the Firemind's body roared the challenge that Ral had known to read out of the sky long ago, because the core of him answered in the same key. I am finite, it said, I am one being; I am made of meat and blood and granted some span of years, fifteen or fifteen thousand, it is all the same in the face of eternity. You are larger than me, older than me, stronger than me. And yet. And yet I am not afraid of you. I will know you. I will master you. And you will have the advantage of me, sometimes, but you cannot defeat me. You can't stop me. _You can't tell me what to do._

Doubt and exhaustion drowned in the fervor that filled him up. Incandescence blazed in his mind. That was what he _was,_ this light, the storm and the fury and the light. This challenge. This defiance. This audacity. Who dared? _Ral Zarek_ dared. He shifted the burden on his back with ease. The question was not whether they would understand what he had created. The question was, if they were ready for what he brought.

The committee sitting at the long wooden table waiting to judge Practicals looked like it was composed of everyone who hadn't moved fast enough to escape. Half the Guild professors were ancient, the other half so young they could be mistaken for the applicants. One by one students came to the table, declared, "Construction," were given their blueprints, a few specialized materials, and access keys to the Trials machine shops and stockroom. At the end of the day they would have to present something that at least resembled the machine in the plans, and make a solid case for why it wouldn't explode when they turned it on.

They'd sorted the line alphabetically by surname and by the time Ral was called up most of the crowd had already gotten their kits and had their eyes fastened on the bright mizzium-framed clock at the back of the auditorium, ticking towards ten. Ral walked up to the table and said, "Demonstration."

The table went quiet. The wizened professor found her glass of water and wet her lips. Then she said, "Excuse me?"

"I choose a demonstration for my practical exam."

Whispers rippled down the length of the table. Backs straightened and glazed expressions sharpened into focus. A few applicants noticed too, nudging their fellows to look. Here, at least, was something _different._

"What do you plan to, erm, demonstrate, Mr..." The professor squinted at her list.

"Zarek," he supplied. "I''m Ral Zarek."

"What do you plan to demonstrate, Mr. Ral Zarek?"

Ral moved to the center of the table - the committee members hastened to clear papers and pens out of the way - and laid down his heavy case. He straightened, rolled his shoulders with a couple of painful pops, and took a deep breath.

"You will have already seen on my application that I am a spark-mage," he said as he lifted the lid. There was no possible way any of the committee members had bothered to read his application. "Spark-magic is a fickle and difficult discipline. It becomes difficult to concentrate on the work at hand if the spark-mage must keep their mind on the constant regulation of voltage and current."

The thick, foot-long cylinder gleamed under the lights as he lifted it from the case. His hands never shook; fear had departed. The die was cast and now he was here and he was off, up and sailing, translating his grand potential into the actual.

"Proper equipment can alleviate this need," he continued, setting the cylinder down on the table and coiling its thick cloth-wrapped cabling next to it. "The League has created many devices that allow operators to channel and direct current with great precision. But electricity is generated much more efficiently via other means than spark-mages, and thus little work has been conducted on optimizing such collection machinery. Until now, of course."

The gauntlet's casing was brass, not mizzium, though he'd tried to polish it the same. A lab wouldn't throw out a piece of mizzium that big and he certainly couldn't "borrow" that much without drawing notice. But when he removed the flanged device from the case and held it up, loosening the leather straps underneath, it captured the auditorium's attention anyways. Pride swelled hot in Ral's chest. No one was watching the clock now.

He held the cold inner surface of the gauntlet to his right forearm and fumbled to pull the straps tight. One tore a bit at its joint and Ral winced. _Five minutes,_ he thought fervently at the last-minute hot-glued joints. _Just five minutes._ The metal warmed quickly to skin-heat and he felt bright spirals of power wrap around his forearm, winding within the brass. He twisted his arm at the elbow; the straps held. Okay. So far, so good. Ral picked up the cable and socketed one end to the port on the gauntlet, the other to the cylinder. The filament set into the cylinder's top gave off a faint glow. Ral raised his right forearm - he'd checked to make sure the cable was long enough, lady, wouldn't that be embarrassing - and focused. A bolt of electricity ripped from the tip of his left hand, up across his shoulders, and down into the shining gauntlet. The metal drank it up like water on dry soil. The filament atop the cylinder flashed to eye-watering brightness.

Collective exhale, scattered applause; but more rewarding than any of these, the quiet shuffle that meant students leaning forward in seats, hundreds of listening ears, hundreds of interested minds.

"Once the transformer has done its work in gathering charge from the spark-mage, the resulting electricity may be stored or discharged in the same way as any other current. For less precise applications, the transformer may be manually reversed, and the gauntlet discharged even by a non-mage. If I could have a volunteer?"

The ancient professor who had called his name stood first. Ral almost asked for a different volunteer, but her sharp blue gaze fixed him firmly and she stuck her arm out without hesitation. Ral gave up and helped her strap the gauntlet to her own forearm as the rest of the committee cleared the area with admirable speed.

Ral turned the last dial to its proper setting, set the "borrowed" electrical potential jar on the table, and backed away. "The third switch on the side, when you're ready," he called.

The professor's arm trembled under the weight of the gauntlet, but she held it straight anyways, keeping the metal a full meter away from the potential jar's electrodes. Even so the liquid within the glass vessel fizzled a bit at the closeness of so much charge. She narrowed her eyes and flipped the switch.

The arc blew the containment vessel apart in a hail of splintering glass. Ral dropped instinctively behind the table as the storage cylinder shorted with an explosive bang. Echoes died away among the auditorium's rafters. Ral straightened back up slowly, heart beating in his throat. The reek of ozone and hot metal hung thick in the air. Next to him he saw his professor-volunteer sitting up on her knees, her grey hair shocked upright and still crackling. Atop the table soot streaked the now-dark storage cylinder and a wide scorchmark was all that remained of the potential jar. A few final shards of glass clattered to the floor in the utter silence.

And then the students roared their approval.

 

* * *

 

Ral groaned and rolled over, trying to shut out the light with the minimum of motion. Pain spiraled up his left arm the moment he moved it, so he stopped moving it. He lay there for an indeterminate amount of time, drifting, postponing the moment he would have to fully acknowledge the hideous hangover that had claimed him. Damage report. Every part of him felt bruised and dry, but he could chalk that up to the hangover. His feet hurt; they must have done a lot of walking. And then there was the matter of his left arm. He managed to move it onto his chest with a minimum of pain and discovered a large white bandage wrapped around it. He hadn't broken it, had he? That would hurt a different way. Ral tugged on the end of the bandage to unravel it, wincing as the cloth scraped tender skin.

_Oh, fuck me, how drunk did I get last night?_

A monster in fresh green ink spiraled along his skin. Its fanged maw gaped in a silent roar just below the elbow joint and the slender scaled body wound down his forearm, tapering to a whiplike tail at the very tip of his index finger. His brain put the pieces together and he groaned again, flopping back down onto the pillow. He'd gotten it done over the scar, hadn't he. With great effort he managed to raise his arm for another look. Yes. At the center of the design, where the dragon's spine would be, his lightning scar cut through the ink. The tattoo artist's needle had managed to stain the pale marking for now, but the color was already fading. Ral knew from experience that It would bleach back to white within the week.

When he made it out of his room and down the hall to the common room, he found, to no one's surprise, the rest of his floormates scattered across the couches in varying degrees of fucked-up. Sasan had apparently joined in their celebratory revel, since she was lying upside-down on a couch and didn't seem to have the strength to right herself. Alon was slumped with his head on the table and had managed to get himself a glass of water, although he didn't look capable of actually drinking from it. Ral got to a couch and flopped back. It took a few minutes before Gavril said, "My wrist is killing me."

"Holy shit," groaned Jenna. "We're fucking idiots."

"Actually, I think I kind of need a healer?" said Gavril.

Ral silently rolled up his left sleeve. Jenna gaped. "Oh, wow. Ral got a fucking tattoo. Shit."

"You win," said Alon, rolling his head slowly along the table's surface.

"Like maybe now," said Gavril. "I need to see a healer now."

"Is that supposed to be a dragon," asked Jenna.

"How the fuck should I know?" muttered Ral.

"Is this 'cause you got in? Is it supposed to be Niv-Mizzet?"

"I just _said,_ I don't know."

"Cause it doesn't look a whole lot like Niv-Mizzet."

"I have no fucking idea what it is, okay? Drunk Ral did not leave a note for Sober Ral."

"Seriously, guys. I think I broke something," said Gavril.

"Go to the fucking healer, Gav."

In lieu of answering Gavril twitched weakly and fell back onto the cushions.

Ral surveyed the lounge with a groan. Jenna had eked out Guild admission on the strength of her mathematical theory written exam, but only just. Alon had scored well on everything, but outstanding on nothing; he'd have to take another year. And Gavril, thoroughly exhausted after Orals, had fallen asleep midway through Practical and had had to turn in something that just barely qualified as "half-built." It was only fair that Ral, with his clear-cut victory over their mutual foe, suffer a bit for the team. So he forced himself back upright and said, "I'll go find a medic."

Alon took one of Gavril's arms and Jenna got the other, and Ral went downstairs to roust one of the medical students out of bed. As his body woke up his skin began to send prickles of sensation along the fresh tattoo. He felt the scar beneath the ink pulsing with an imagined light, a brilliant spine that breathed life into claws and fangs and wings. And all at once reality hit him, the sweet cool bliss of victory, and he nearly staggered with the weight of relief. He had won. He, Ral Zarek, had won admission to the Izzet League. A kind of electric sympathy vibrated between him and his companions, and in his mind's eye it expanded to cover The Vents and all its creaking snoring scribbling inhabitants, it overflowed out into the streets and raced down the broad boulevard and flew in bright streamers from the spires of Nivix, Aerie of the Firemind, Guild-Hall of the Izzet League, and all of them within that invisible intangible field resonated in connection like bound circuits. They were his people now, his new temple wrought in lightning and sweat and steel, a family forged not from sympathy of blood but sympathy of mind. _His_ family. _His_ Guild.

His home.


	11. The Hazards of Undetonated Ordnance

New Prahv was painfully boring. Ral Zarek suspected it had been constructed with this as its goal. A committee must have been formed, after months of careful deliberation, and it had gone through the plans and carefully sanded off any bit that might be strange, unusual, or otherwise interesting. Somewhere down in the Archives, he was certain, some luckless librarian had filed the meeting minutes to prove it.

The guard at the door examined Ral's Guild sigil just as closely as he had the past fifty-six times, conjuring the seals enchanted into it and comparing them to his reference. Ral gamely resisted the urge to tell the man he was a Guildmage and he went where he damn well pleased; instead he quietly sulked over the fact that, given that interrupting people had gotten him exiled to New Prahv Archives in the first place, forcing him to deal with Azorius made a frustrating amount of sense. The guard finally handed him back his Guild sigil. Once inside the Archives' main building Ral made his way as quickly as possible through the reading rooms, drawing a bracelet of smaller sigils from one pocket. The first of the little blue and silver charms let him into the stacks themselves; it took four more charms and fifteen solid minutes just to reach the Zal Concordat wing. The white marble staircase spiraled down into darkness. By the time he reached the level that dealt with the Guildpact itself - two more charms - utter silence reigned. Ral had the entire area to himself at the moment, and even the dustmotes seemed to have been there for centuries.

Ral settled himself at the bulky reading-room desk and checked yesterday's progress on his written assessment. His punishment detail, really. Niv-Mizzet had dispatched Ral to write, quote, "A comprehensive analysis of the Guildpact's construction from a dynamics perspective," chiefly because Ral had publicly contradicted him one too many times on the subject of material opacities, and both he and the dragon knew it. He spent every hour trapped in this buried coffin longing to be back in his laboratory spire at Nivix, watching out the window at the slow orbit of the Guild-Hall's thousand pieces, keeping half his attention on the distant conversation of students and lab assistants and letting the other half drift with the stone in the sky. But temporary exile to an enormous library wasn't the worst sentence in the world, and anyway, what was he supposed to do? The Firemind had been wrong, and both he and the dragon knew _that,_ too.

He scanned the list of potential references he'd been compiling over the past few days. No more avoiding it; he'd have to fetch a truly disgusting number of volumes today. And he'd have to do it himself _(ugh)_ because the book-minions who did that kind of stupid chore weren't permitted here. Ral had only gotten this deep in the wing that stored Zal Concordat materials because the Firemind had insisted, because the Firemind was the only being who would demand special treatment for someone he was reprimanding.

But the Firemind's vanity also meant that, despite himself, Ral was curious. What was down here that the Azorius didn't permit others to see? Almost certainly nothing of interest. Almost certainly ledger after ledger of parking citations or their Pact-War equivalents. But he'd have to check it out anyway, just so he wouldn't have to wonder. Consequently, in six weeks Ral had discovered the Guildpact was a product of an antique branch of law-magic called _hieromancy_ , distant ancestor of the sort the Azorius practiced today; that of the original _paruns_ only the Firemind was still alive and well, although nobody could agree if the Simic parun counted as "alive"; and that he was probably allergic to the weird blue mold that grew in the Archives' damper corners.

His reference list might be daunting, but he couldn't continue without fresh sources. Might as well get it over with. Ral stood from the desk and gestured to summon one of the silver sprites that represented the Archives' pervasive enchantments. A flicker of white light floated down into the palm of his hand. He read the name of the first volume out loud. Then he read it again, slower. Then he read it again, even slower, and without cursing at the sprite at the end. It finally blinked a cheerful blue and shot off into the stacks. Ral followed its glowing trail, dragging the book-cart behind him. It had one squeaky wheel which he permitted to continue squeaking because it made the only non-Ral sounds on the entire level. The shelving around him sparkled with dozens more of the little avatars moving through the books. With materials this old even the Archives' powerful translation enchantments struggled to make sense of languages, and the silver sprites were hard at work refining their own memories, analyzing archaic usages and long-dead dialects. The faint mist of translation spells clung to everything he read; words scrambled themselves before his eyes and flicked between possible meanings. It made for one hell of a headache.

The sprite slowed and settled on the book he'd requested. Ral tossed it onto the cart and read the sprite the next entry on the list. It darted away. He followed, squeaking. The translation-spells couldn't decide if the first book he'd retrieved should be called _Hieromantic Practice_ or _The Crafting of Magic in the Hiero-Mantic Tradition._ Ral just hoped it contained something actually related to hieromancy. He'd skipped reading up on hieromancy itself at first, assuming he could use his existing knowledge of law-magic, but the Pact-era accounts quickly made it clear that he was looking at something else entirely. So he'd just have to get inside the skulls of the ten-thousand-year-old practitioners of a vanished discipline. Lovely.

But building an enchantment that could endure ten thousand years and guide an entire world was no mean feat, and maybe the Firemind knew all about how the Guildpact had been put together, but _Ral_ didn't. And these proto-Azorius seemed much more interesting than the Senate. The modern lawkeepers were anything but flexible, but Azor's contemporaries talked about his magic as a subtle adaptation, a talent of using small nudges to control a situation. It fit with what he'd been told of the enchantment's behavior. The Pact had never smote down a Guildmaster trying to break its rules; instead a million tiny chances would align just so to thwart their efforts. That subtlety had ultimately been its downfall. When Agrus Kos had publicly exposed the vampire Szadek and the House Dimir, the Guildpact had faced an irreconcilable contradiction: it was forced to keep the secret, but couldn't act directly enough to do it. It wasn't allowed to. So the spell had turned on itself, trying to write out its own effects - and snapped.

The sprite stopped again. Ral added what was either _Governing the Interactions of Temporal Enchantments_ , _Stabilizing Methods in Causality Theory_ , or _Husbandry of Small Rodents_ to the cart. With luck it would be one of the first two. With extra special luck it would be one of the treatises on causality left by Azor's followers themselves; so far those had been the most fruitful in terms of understanding how the enchantment actually worked.

The Guildpact's extraordinarily ambitious goal had forced its architects to spend most of their time on the simple question of cause and effect, because the Pact had to know, somehow, what the consequences of each action would be, how to shift each dice-roll to maintain the promised balance of power. It hadn't just bound the _paruns_ and the Guilds and the inhabitants of Ravnica; it had been woven into Ravnica itself, into the very fabric of reality. It had to be in order to work. And somewhere in fighting his way through ancient prose Ral had started to really, really want to know how they'd managed that. After a week of frustrated scribbling, though, he'd been forced back to the basics on this front as well; the hieromancers' entire conceptual framework of space and time differed from the modern Izzet approach and they hadn't had the common decency to write any of it down in mathematical form. So it was time to read up on "temporal enchantment causality theory." Or maybe the care and feeding of bunny rabbits. He'd find out soon enough.

The little sprite doggedly steered him through the stacks, but Ral ran out of patience long before he ran out of titles, and after book number seven he declared himself done for the moment and let the sprite dissipate as he returned to the desk. He stacked the new volumes, found a clean page in his work notebook, and set himself to the task of figuring out whether any of them would be at all useful.

He'd given a "maybe" to one volume and tossed four others into the "absolutely not" category - _Governing the Interactions of Temporal Enchantments_ was indeed about magic, while _Hieromantic Practice_ should have been titled _Incredibly Flowery Biography of Azor I Written Five Hundred Years After The Fact_ \- by the time a distant bell pierced his concentration. This far down New Prahv's immense carillon made little more than a vibration in the stuffy air, but in the dead silence around him it was enough to make Ral lean back and check his chronometer. Noon already? As his work trance faded his body registered its complaints. His stomach rumbled even though he'd already eaten everything he'd brought with him, and his legs and back were vigorously protesting the cramped quarters.

Street food, then. The hassle of getting a permit kept vendors from selling in front of New Prahv itself, but he needed a walk anyway. Ral arranged his workspace in such an order that hopefully he'd be able to remember what he'd been doing when he came back, then repeated the long process of entry in reverse. His knees ached and even the thin sunlight that made it into the Archives' upper reading rooms had him squinting for a moment, but when he reached the pavement outside New Prahv he could feel the blood coming back to his limbs. He picked a random street and strolled past the dozens of vendors who had set up their temporary stalls to catch the lunch crowd. One of them served flash-fried chicken tasty enough to have built up a line, so he joined it and stared vaguely into the distance as he waited. Memory prodded him and Ral reminded himself yet again that no, he was not supposed to be meeting Oliver right now after the professor's monthly Nivix check-in, since Ral's exile had temporarily canceled their usual lunch plans. His thoughts drifted back to the pile of books on the Archive desk. The old Azorius penchant for writing out mathematical equations in prose drove him mad, but perhaps he was thinking about it from the wrong-- He paused to take the chicken the somewhat-annoyed vendor kept trying to hand him and continued once he'd wandered out of the flow of street traffic. Perhaps he was thinking about it from the wrong angle (hah). Math could just be symbols, while prose had to have verbs and nouns, and those were fairly standardized. Maybe he could tell the sprites to check the words in an equation against other examples, match some basic modern formula to its ancient counterpart, work backwards from there...

"Ral?" said a voice he hadn't heard in decades.

His attention plummeted back to ground level, along with his chicken. His mind went blank, utterly at a loss for how to process the figure standing in front of him in teal robes and a Temple vest, staring at him with equal surprise.

"Ma?" he blurted out. Too late he caught the lightning surging in his blood, responding to his spiraling emotions - but the gauntlet caught it, grounded him and channeled it away, and he had no time to protest before his mother - _his mother!_ \- swept him up in a tight embrace.

Ral hugged her back mostly out of reflex, still utterly lost, and stammered, "Ma, what are you doing here?" He managed to disentangle himself long enough to get a solid look at her. Deep lines creased the skin on her forehead and around her eyes, and the top of her head only came up to the level of his chin (when had _that_ happened?) but it was still clearly, undoubtedly, his Ma.

His mother shrugged as best she could without letting go of him. "The Conclave - oh, who cares. What are _you_ doing here!?"

"I'm working at New Prahv. Just for now, I mean, the Firemind sent me there to do a thing, hopefully I can get back to Nivix soon. New Prahv is incredibly boring. The guard checks my sigil every single day, can you believe that?" Ral knew he was babbling, but knowing that didn't seem to be keeping him from doing it. "And I don't even have anyone to get me books, I have to go get all the books myself. It's going to be great to get back to Nivix."

"Nivix?" echoed his mother lightly. She pulled away, though she still held his shoulders tightly. "I remember when your grandmother told me she was sending you to the Izzet. I thought she was mad."

"I got in when I was nineteen, after I left Grandmother's house. I'm a Guildmage now, I work at Nivix. I have a spire where I do my work and everything."

She hugged him again, even tighter this time. "Oh, congratulations. What do you work on?"

Ral tried to think of a way to explain _energy unification theory_ to his mother. "Science, Ma. Guild stuff."

"You can't talk about it. I understand."

"I only made Guildmage a year ago," he admitted. "It's still kind of...new. Nivix is - it's huge, Ma, and the Firemind--" Ral shook his head. "He's something else."

But his mother wasn't listening anymore, just looking him up and down with a wistful smile. Ral gave a sudden, silent thanks that he'd left his shirt-sleeve rolled down over his scar.

"Come home for Year's End," she said.

Ral blinked. "What?"

"Come for the Year's End feast. It's at our house this time, all the cousins are coming. And your brother's cooking."

"Jaro's _cooking?"_ he repeated stupidly. Somehow, of everything she'd said so far, this made the least sense.

"Oh, you haven't heard. Your little brother's a chef now. You should see him with those knives of his, just snick-snick-snick! and a bushel of apples is all in pieces. He hasn't let me or your father cook for Year's End in ages. Even Layla's out of the kitchen when he's working."

"Layla?" echoed Ral. "Did Jaro get married?"

"Three years now." He mother's expression turned suddenly sly. "Does my little boy have someone special?"

Ral sorted hurriedly through his mental catalogue for a story his mother might approve of. "Nothing that's lasted," he admitted. "The work is - I'm busy a lot."

"Of course you are. Guildmage at thirty-two! My brilliant boy." She trailed off. Ral could see her mind returning to the topic of her invitation and he quickly asked, "How's Da?"

His mother's face fell. The bottom dropped out of Ral's stomach. Surely they would have sent him word if-- if--

"His leg's getting worse," said his mother finally.

Ral sagged in relief. "Ma, you scared the hell out of me! I thought you were going to say Da was dead!"

"Oh no, my dear, we'd send word if... Well, but they did have an accident at Landstrasse, well, they say 'accident.' Lost everything below the right knee. We found a healer who got most of it regrown, but it's never been the same. The cold makes it worse."

"Oh." Ral shifted awkwardly. "I'm sorry."

"He's never going to believe me when I tell him I saw you, you know. All grown up. And a Guildmage, too. He'll be so happy."

"I bet," muttered Ral.

"Come for Year's End," said his mother.

"Ma, I can't."

"Yes you can."

"Fine, I don't want to, okay?" snapped Ral. "Everyone in the Eighth made it pretty clear I wasn't wanted. I don't see why I should go back now."

All the color drained from his mother's face. "Is that what you thought?" she asked faintly. "That we didn't want...?"

Humming rose at the back of Ral's mind and he shunted the building charge to the gauntlet just in time; an arc crackled up his spine nevertheless. "Why did you just let them-- Why didn't you help me, Ma!? Answer me that! Why wouldn't you _help me!?"_ He ran out of words and stood there breathing hard, staring at his mother as her expression fell through surprise, into grief, into sadness. She reached out, slowly; when he didn't move, she gently took his left wrist between finger and thumb. Ral nearly pulled away, half-furious she would dare, half-frightened she might be hurt.

"The day you got your scar," she began softly. "Erika brought you home to me that day, pale as death, freezing cold. And your arm was still bleeding all over, you were covered in it. I couldn't see how you had any blood left in you at all. My little boy." She turned his hand palm-down, tracing the white line running down to his fingertip. Ral tensed for a religious rebuke, but she didn't flinch at the sight of the green-ink dragon tattooed over it. "And they tell me magic did this? I swore on Tanit's heart that day that I'd do whatever it took to keep you from getting hurt like that ever again."

"So it was for my own good," spat Ral.

"We thought it was. We just wanted to keep you safe."

"Well, you didn't." He yanked his hand away and stuffed it into one pocket.

His mother only looked sad. "I knew I'd lose you, ever since you were a little toddler running around the apartment. There was too much of your grandmother in you for you to ever stay in the Eighth. I just wish we could have kept you a little while longer. I wish you could have told us what was wrong."

"I _did_ tell you!" he yelled. "You wouldn't listen! No one. Ever. _Listened!"_

She backed up a step, holding up her hands. "Ral. I'm sorry. I'll...I'll go, I didn't mean to bring up bad memories. I just wanted to make sure you were - okay."

Ral swallowed hard, trying to breathe past the lump in his chest. The fear he'd expected didn't show on her face; only regret. He turned away and heaved in a deep breath, falling reflexively into a calming exercise. When he had his voice back he muttered, "It's all right."

His mother came up behind him. "It's not all right. I'll go."

"No - yes, I'm angry, but - I didn't mean to yell at you, Ma. I'm glad you and Da are okay. And Jaro." He stared at the ground; all at once his throat felt too tight to speak.

Then he felt a light touch at his shoulder again and his mother said, "If you ever want to, you come home for a few days. That's all," she added quickly before he could interrupt. "You don't have to talk about anything. I won't ask you to go to Temple or see your cousins or anything else. We won't tell a soul. You just come and see me and your father and your little brother and your new sister Layla. And we'll make Jaro cook."

"It's not that simple, Ma." His voice broke on the last syllable.

"If you ever want to," she repeated quietly. "You always have a home with us."

He didn't answer. "I'll go," she said. "You're so busy. I'll let you get back to your work."

Ral took another breath, scrubbed at his eyes, and turned back around. "Are you, um. Are you going to be here tomorrow?"

"It's just for the day," said his mother.

"Oh. I'm stuck at New Prahv, for, uh, the next few weeks, till I get this--" he just barely caught the words _stupid bullshit_ "--Guild assignment done. But afterwards I'll be back at Nivix and, um. You can...come there anytime and I'll - I'll probably be there. Just ask at the Guildgate for Zarek, I'll come down. And meet you. And, uh, I can show you my lab, and...my lab," he finished lamely.

She smiled softly. "I'd like that."

"Okay. Well, just...just let me know. And...you can post letters to the Guild-Hall. If you put my name on it, I'll get it. Eventually."

"I will."

"Okay. Um..."

She embraced him again, cautiously. Then held him at arm's length. "Now you be careful around that dragon," she told him sternly. "I don't want him eating you."

Ral's gaze narrowed reflexively. "He can try if he likes."

"I know, I know. But you be careful anyway."

"Yes, Ma."

"And you find yourself time for someone special in your life."

"Yes, Ma."

"There will always be more work."

"Yes, Ma."

"I know, I'm nagging you."

"Yes, Ma."

"Oh, hush."

She kissed his cheek and said, "Go back to your work, my little thundercloud. I love you."

This time he hugged her, in a sudden burst of too many emotions to name. "I love you too, Ma," he whispered.

She left.

Ral retraced his steps back to the Archives by reflex alone. He descended the spiral stairs, still dazed, blinking as if he'd been blinded. Back on his research level the silence pressed in all around him. He sat at the desk. Got up again. Paced back and forth in front of it. His mind skipped from topic to topic, returning in between to distant memories, with the occasional break to discharge the static building up around him. Ral felt like a storm had blown through his head, upended everything inside. He sat again and pressed the heels of his hands against his forehead.

All right, focus. He clearly wasn't going to get any more thinking done today. But he couldn't just sit here and spark off, either. He needed action. Exertion. Might as well do some of the more menial chores. He found his list again and followed a sprite through aisle after aisle of ancient books, his attention years away, letting his body stack new volumes on the cart while his mind tried to dig itself out of this mental morass.

There was nothing inherently strange about the tall blue book wedged awkwardly into the top shelf of this bookcase. Ral noticed it, instead, because the silver sprite skipped over it. Odd. He refocused on the present: had he mis-set his search parameters? He halted the sprite's scan for _The Guild-Pact Considered: Essays on the Occasion of the Bimillennial,_ and directed it back. It again skipped the blue book. Trying to force the sprite to that specific volume only resulted in it flickering unhappily between the books to either side, confused as to what he wanted. As far as the Archives' enchantments were concerned the blue volume didn't exist. Very odd.

Ral pulled it out for a closer look. A preliminary skim told him it was yet another meticulously-kept personal diary of what would become the Azorius. The Archives had hundreds of such journals, and for whatever reason this one had gotten expunged from the catalogue. Mystery solved, boring answer. He went to put it back. But the seals stamped inside the front cover caught his attention, and then made his heart skip a beat. A few more hurriedly-turned pages only strengthened his suspicion.

Ral lowered the book and took a slow breath. His first reaction was utter disbelief, but - well, of course it would be down here without so much as a label. _Of course_ it had been filed and forgotten hundreds, probably thousands of years ago, erased from the records in favor of keeping track of vandalism citations and building permits. It was the most Azorius thing he could imagine, and that was quite fitting; because this wasn't an Azorius account, this was _Azor's_ account.

He abandoned the cart mid-aisle and navigated back without glancing up from the diary. When he reached the desk he shoved aside his notes with one arm, laid out the book, and summoned as many of the translation-sprites as the Archives could give him. They hovered in a silver mist at his shoulder. The entries started mid-paragraph and ended mid-sentence - it couldn't be the only volume - but none of the other books on that shelf had looked remotely like it. Azor's faded handwriting wandered around dozens of drawings of anything the hieromancer had found interesting - a cyclops, an old aqueduct, an early Guild sigil - and that fit, didn't it, with what Azor's followers had said, with their descriptions of a curious, constantly-sketching onlooker? Could this really be the personal diary of the Azorius _parun_ , the Architect of the Pact himself? Ral leafed through the book at random, his mind racing, his eyes darting from page to page. Midway through the diary his attention caught on a scrawl he thought he knew, and he focused the translation-sprites on it. Sure enough, they resolved: _Firemind_. Intriguing. Azor would have known Niv-Mizzet, wouldn't he? Or at least known of him. Ral expanded the sprites' range and watched glowing silver text form above the page.

_Blackwing draks playgue the ashbound as Nivven brood which once containd them is much reduc'd in the skys. Of dragons proper som bare hundreds remain in Raffanika and of flight-lords there can onlee be found Mizzet, called Firemind, who cares litle for the hunt. Niv'Tesser, the Destroying Light, and Niv'Anaar, Mid-nite's Sunne, haf vanishd beyond my ken, and Burning-Tree Clan of the Gruul reports siting the grate bones of Niv'Kyrrik Shadowspeaker. Thus onne at least of the brood is perish'd. What could hav fell'd such a beast is a mattr of som concern and no Guilded will yet claim such a deed openlee tho all wish it whisper'd in secret that it was their powers._

Ral sat back. Nivven _brood_. Amazing. Everyone knew Niv-Mizzet hadn't always been the only greater dragon in the world, but no one was clear on what had happened to the others, and most Izzet assumed that was because the Firemind had killed them. Privately, Ral had always disagreed. If the Firemind had bested his siblings, he'd make sure everyone knew it. Gaps in the story made Ral think the dragon didn't care for the reality, and Azor made it sound like half the brood had just - disappeared.

 _Niv'Mizzet Firemind at least seems notte to depart from here,_ continued Azor, _but tho he is counted flight-lord he has nevr elect'd to sire broods of hys own; and while myself I must confes I nevr thot to see the day when Raffanika's oldest beasts roam'd this land no mor, unless the othr grate broods are not so thinned as we believe I fear it shall come to pass. Of the Firemind, none hav inquir'd of him whither his brood-mates, or if now that he rules Raffanika's skys uncontest'd he shall spawn fledglings of hys own._

Ral chuckled at the next few lines: _One suspects such questionning should lead to a swift & fiery death; in the end it mattrs litle as the Firemind keeps his ownne counsel and does as he wills._ Well, some things didn't change.

He turned the page to find a large sketch of an unfamiliar district, high towers rendered small by a looming range of mountains, seen through a pavilion's graceful arches. He traced the lines of buildings with a sudden fervor. Something about their curves caught in his mind; their alien aspect, that ink-shaded sky. He ran his finger down the passage that occupied the bottom half of the page. Mid-paragraph the translation spells stumbled and stuck on one particular word: _Mindful of my gift as--_ and then it blurred away. Letters sputtered while the spell spun through its possibilities. Finally the sprites gave up and fell back to translating whatever subsets of the mystery word they could, and the letters resolved again:

_Mindful of my gift as thousand-world-walker, I haf gonne from Raffanika's limit to seeke consel among others of my discipline among the caste-masters of Benalia._

Azor had gone to the district beside the mountains to consult other hieromancers, and he had sketched it while he was there. Unremarkable in and of itself; other Azorius accounts frequently mentioned their parun's penchant for travel. But the place he'd drawn looked like one of the old "cities," from back when settlements had been isolated, separate things, and most of those had disappeared by Azor's time. There certainly hadn't been any settlements of such a size that didn't show damage from the Pact Wars then ravaging the world. And the way Azor's own journal phrased it triggered something ticking in the back of his brain. Ral had seen some of those words before. He pulled back over _Governing Interactions of Temporal Enchantments_. Yes. There it was. The translation-spells rendered the phrase as Ravnica's _limit_. But _limit_ , to the old Azorius theoreticians, hadn't meant the edge of the settled area.

Ral let the page fall back, his mind racing.

When the hieromancers used it to speak of enchantments affecting causality - when they spoke of the Guildpact - _limit_ meant the world itself. Space and time. All of reality. Azor hadn't gone into the long-vanished countryside; Azor had gone beyond _Ravnica's existence._

The dragons hadn't died. They'd _left._

And to someone on Ravnica, Azor would have just...disappeared. To a city - a world - only he could see.

Azor would have gone to a place that was _here,_ and yet _not._

Tall towers against the sky, a vision he hadn't seen in decades, and now he knew - _he knew--_

_It's real._

It was all real.

_I wasn't crazy._

_I was_ right.

Reality - _this_ reality - was no more unique than a page of that diary. A thousand others pressed against it a hair-thickness away, all the same but each one different. And he could _feel_ them, that pressure of existence, it had always been there, _they had always been there_ those other skies folded away into the place where "where" didn't mean anything _he had always been right_ and now all he had to do was take _this_ the frail sketch around him and trade it for _an o  t  h   e    r_

he fell

he burned

he shattered melted reformed

and Ral was _somewhere else._

Cold hit him first. Sight faded in, then sound. The sense of flagstones beneath his boots, slightly uneven. Then the wind screamed hard enough that he doubled over, clapping his hands over his ears. When the blast faded he straightened again. He looked around in mute shock. This wasn't the graceful pavilion in the drawing. It couldn't be. But...before him a single column still supported half an arch, a stub curving into emptiness. Far beyond the broken stone the mountains of Azor's drawing cut their dark line against the horizon, but some force had bitten huge chunks from their peaks, ripped open chasms along their flanks. Silver and smoke blotched the sky, equal parts hostile sun and unwelcoming shadow. In place of Azor's city a desolate mire stretched all the way to the distant peaks. Grey ooze choked on clots of wreckage, rotting wood and rusted metal, mingled with blots of a substance so dark it confused the eye and existed only in silhouette.

The wind struck Ral again and he hunched over. Something tore at his waist and one scarlet Guild sash flew away behind him. Ral turned instinctively, grabbing for the silk, and froze halfway through the futile attempt.

It didn't look like a machine. Ral knew machines. This was something - else. It looked as if someone had told a Simic mage to follow Izzet blueprints, or maybe the other way round. It looked as if someone had heard a machine described and then built it out of whatever came to hand: metal, bone, glass, flesh... The behemoth had smashed - head? - first through what had been the roof and straight into the floor, its conical cranium half-buried in the rubble. Long, spiny struts dragged behind it like the legs of a squashed mosquito, trailing torn cable and splintered bone. The outline of a huge dark grey-green stain covered the flagstones around the impact. Chunks of that baffling black lay around it. Against the rubble Ral could see them as fragments with snapped and ragged edges. Stubs of the same blackness still anchored to the deactivated - dead - machine told him their likely origin. He knelt to look at a shard nearly the length of his forearm. Even up close he still couldn't make out any true detail of its form. The night-black substance drank up all light.

Ral untied another of his silk sashes, wrapped it tightly around his right hand, and carefully touched the shard. Neither hot nor cold. It felt like well-made steel, nothing more. He picked it up. It sat surprisingly light in his hand. When he turned it back and forth he could see the edges of the thing, jagged, fractal, alien. Maybe he could match it to part of the machine-thing, figure out where it came from. He stood. And the machine was moving.

Crawling, creeping, shimmering - something oozed and bubbled its way up through the debris, dark and glossy, giving the wreckage the look of a newly grotesque, false life. It flowed like a liquid but bulged up and sent out tendrils of itself, waved gently in the air as if sniffing, tasting. Ral staggered backwards, suddenly unable to breathe, that blackness, he knew that blackness-- He took another step back and his heel caught in a crack of the stone and he hit the ground hard looking at _that nightmare,_ the oil that spread that devoured that-- he threw up his arms and squeezed his eyes shut he needed to run he needed to _wake up--_

Silence.

Ral opened his eyes.

He was sitting on the floor of the New Prahv Archives, in front of his desk. Ral lowered his arms slowly, hardly daring to breathe, waiting to be snapped back to that place any second. Had that been - was it an illusion - but his sash was gone, his tunic cold to the touch and gritty with dust, and - and in one hand he still clutched that shard of fuliginous steel.

What the hell had he been _thinking!?_ Ral snapped a containment sphere around the artifact with the speed of a mage well-versed in Izzet laboratory accidents. He floated it up above one hand and triple-checked that the spell was watertight, airtight, soundproof, mana-blocking. Perhaps he ought to crush it now; but he didn't know what it was yet. Besides, trying to crush it might be worse.

He let the sphere rest on the desk and returned his attention to the diary. His fingers shook so much that it took four attempts before the sprites understood his summoning gesture. He wound one bit of light around the fingers of his left hand and dismissed the fog of translation spells to reveal the original handwriting. Then he pressed the sprite against a single handwritten phrase.

_World-walker._

The letters shimmered. He withdrew his hand and a ghost of Azor's original scrawl floated up before him. Ral gave it a command and tossed it upwards. The wisp of light burst and scattered among the shelves. Dozens, hundreds of silver motes settled onto Azor's account, though plenty more attached themselves to other volumes throughout the stacks. Ral turned to a page near the end of the blue book where the pinpricks clustered thick enough to practically jostle one another. He brushed them to one side and resolved the words.

_It is time to admit that that effort has failed and we are compelled to drastic measures. Our craft stretches to the utmost to encompass Raffanika alone. The Pact does not, cannot, have the strength to account for the motion of all the thousand worlds. If the problem is to be rendered tractable it must be cut to size, and there is only one way to do so: Raffanika's limit must be sealed. The thousand worlds cannot be allowed to produce any effect that the Pact might be forced to consider. None of the thousand-world-walkers may bring outside influence within, and by the same blade, none may be permitted to leave, for so long as the Pact shall stand._

_I know this is the only way I can guarantee the Pact's success. I know this is the right and only decision I can make as Hieromancer and Architect of the Pact. But as Esr, lonely traveler, I face the ugly reality that before the Pact is sealed I must choose between all the thousand worlds and the single one that has become my home, for circumstance does not permit me both._

For so long as the Pact shall stand. And now the Pact was gone. And Ravnica lay open to...

Ral tried to calm his pounding heart. The marble weight of the Archives pressed down on him. All the shadows in its corners seemed to be shifting, reaching. He needed to get out of this suffocating silence. He needed light and air and _Ravnica_ around him. The world, the _real_ world, not that nightmare of steel and devastation. He shrank the sphere to a cylindrical skin around the shard and hid it at the bottom of his satchel. There was no room to put Azor's diary in with it. He tucked the book under one arm instead; far easier to explain the book than to explain the artifact. Even so as he walked back out through the reading rooms he felt like everyone had to know what he was carrying, as if the dark shard were glowing, shouting; surely each person he passed could sense its foreign presence, its fundamental wrongness.

Sure enough, the afternoon door-guard stopped him and pointed to the blue book under his arm. "Sorry, sir. You can't remove materials from the Archives," she told him.

"I have dispensation to do my research." He rattled the bracelet of Archive sigils clasped around his right wrist.

"Excellent, sir. I'll just need to see your Archives Temporary Resource Relocation permit."

Even the Azorius had their loopholes, and if Ral had learned one thing about the Senate, it was that even they didn't know most of their own rules. "The desk clerk told me one wasn't needed," he sniffed. He didn't have to pretend to be annoyed. "My sigils cover it."

"Afraid you need to be issued a permit, sir," said the guard. But a note of uncertainty had entered her voice. Could she be totally, completely sure Ral wasn't allowed to take that book, sure enough to risk taking the matter to the Circulation Desk? Or was she more likely to have made a mistake that would make her the subject of an official notice of incorrect policy enforcement, and an official Izzet League complaint on top of that?

"This is absurd," said Ral in his best cranky-Firemind impression. "I've had it up to here with being sent about from clerk to clerk. I'm filing a--

"No, that's all right," she said quickly. "All right. You're...you're clear, sir."

 _"Thank_ you," said Ral, and stomped off with an appropriately irritated air before she could think any harder on the subject.

There was no chance the Azorius would come after the book. It hadn't been catalogued and therefore didn't exist. Even if the guard changed her mind and tried to tell someone she wouldn't be able to fill out any of the necessary paperwork. But even so Ral didn't let himself relax till he crossed under the Izzet Guildgate and out of the Senate's jurisdiction. When he made it back to his own spire he threw out the two lab assistants still in the structure, told them not to come back for three days, and left a message with the central Nivix switchboard instructing everyone else to do the same. He had built his personal workspace at the top level of the spire, just below the open stone pavilion that formed the tip. The door answered only to a particular tune hummed in electrical arcs, and here, back in his sanctum, Ral finally let himself think about what he was carrying.

He found one of his desk-top suspension rings, dumped out the small rocks he'd left hovering in the field's invisible grasp, and set the containment sphere with its black treasure in their place. Then he laid the book out on one of the tables nearest the windows and considered the problem of translation as he worked up an illusion-spell to further conceal the shard. It would take him days to rig up anything like the Archives' powerful translation spells, but it was possible, and he'd still be visiting the Archives every day. If he brought the right equipment tomorrow it wouldn't be too hard to copy a small portion of the enchantments, particularly if he restricted them to a single language, place, time. For the moment, though, Azor's words had returned to indecipherable scribbles.

But, oh goddess. It was real. It was all real. The thrill of discovery finally began to overwhelm his terror of that ruined world. They couldn't all be like that. There had to be more places like Ravnica, full of life and strangeness and other minds. The universe around them was so much bigger and brighter than any of them had imagined. He could barely stand to imagine the joy of the League when they discovered the expanse he'd always known was there. So many new worlds to explore, to understand, to master; no end to the horizons to be sought. He had to tell someone. He had to figure out _how_ to tell someone. He had to figure out how to tell Niv--

Oh.

Oh no.

All at once Azor's musings on the fate of the Nivven brood took on a new and awful shape. He'd said they "vanished," and now Ral understood what that meant.

The greater dragons hadn't died. They'd left. _And they'd left Niv-Mizzet behind._

Oh, no. Oh, goddess, no no no.

The possibilities: either Niv-Mizzet had never known what Azor or his brood-mates were, and hadn't figured it out in the ten thousand years since.

Or.

Niv-Mizzet was a world-walker himself, and had never seen fit to mention this fact, nor the true nature of these infinite realities, to anyone in his entire Guild.

Or.

Niv-Mizzet wasn't a world-walker, and he knew it. And if he couldn't be one, nobody else got to, either.

 _For so long as the Pact shall stand._ Azor had locked out world-walkers to make the problem of cause and effect simple enough for the Guildpact to function. But the ban would have also mollified the dragon's jealousy. Under the Guildpact's restrictions it didn't matter whether he was a world-walker. No one was going anywhere, and he could be certain no outsiders would show up to challenge his primacy, to display abilities he did not have and could not obtain.

_And if anyone's in a position to notice the return of pre-Guildpact traits..._

"It's the blasted Firemind," finished Ral aloud. Oh no. He'd be waiting for the world-walkers' reappearance - he'd be _watching_ \- and oh god, _if he knew..._

A politely unspoken truth of Ravnican politics: if Niv-Mizzet decided he wanted something, there was, actually, nothing in Ravnica that could stop him. It had little to do with being a Guild _parun_ and quite a bit to do with being a ten-story-tall functionally-immortal fire-breathing dragon. Even Rakdos couldn't take him out; even the nephilim hadn't done more than scratch his ruby scales. No one enjoyed the Firemind's combination of petty vanity and overwhelming force, but no one could do anything about it, either. Only the Guildpact had ever restrained Niv-Mizzet. The dragon hadn't done much in the centuries since then primarily because - well, who really knew why the Firemind did anything, but Ral suspected he'd never bothered attacking the other Guilds because he just didn't care.

But if Niv-Mizzet realized world-walkers had returned, and decided he'd become one? If he found out that Ral could do...this, whatever this was? Nothing on Ravnica could save him. Nothing. His only chance would be to run, and the only safe haven would be the one place the Firemind couldn't follow - _out_ and _away_ , beyond the limit. But if he ever went that far, he'd never be able to return.

He'd lose Ravnica forever.

So he couldn't let the Niv-Mizzet find out. And that meant he couldn't let anyone else, either. Not another soul in the League could know. All knowledge shared among the Izzet got back to the Firemind, one way or another. And how could he trust anyone else to keep such an extraordinary secret - not when the desire to share the magnitude of such a discovery already stretched his own restraint, even with the certain knowledge that it would destroy his life.

"Ey, Zarek!" called a voice over his terminal. Ral nearly dropped the illusion-spell and took a frantic moment to figure out what was happening. Shit. He'd switched on the desk communications terminal out of habit, and now Gav was calling. And Ral had turned on the damn terminal and left a message on the switchboard, he couldn't pretend he wasn't in. So he flipped a toggle-switch and tried, "What," in his most annoyed voice.

Unfortunately, this was Gav; an irritated Ral didn't even register. "The dragon let you out?" he asked cheerfully.

"Still in exile. Just done for the day."

"Well, here's something that'll cheer you up. We're all going over to Maree's, she's cracking out one of the new weirds. You've got to come see this thing."

Ral tied the final knots of the illusion-spell and let it settle into place over the shard. "What's she mixing?"

"It's this crazy gel substrate in a plasmodermic bubble, then they're hitting it with current. Figured it'd be up your alley."

"Hmmm," said Ral, as if he weren't certain he cared. In truth, that did sound fun. And right now he could use some fun. Right now he needed - normal things. Yes. Normal things to break the spell of shattered mountains and black machines, to distract him from the burning weight in his mind. Time so he could get his head above water. Figure out what was going on. What to do next.

Gav was already there when Ral reached Maree's spire, one in a sizable crowd of onlookers gathered on the balcony overlooking the weird manufact's primary production chamber. The new substrate hung in a ring of suspension fields, a formless blob pulsating with cyan light, as humans and goblins scurried around attending to last-minute details. Ral let himself relax and take in the atmosphere. The lab filled with color, laughter, energy. Life.

Then for a moment the voices faded around him like someone had turned down the volume, colors draining away, and his heart went cold under the weight of the...the _insignificance_ of Ravnica. The universe was a forest, a forest only he could see, and all his reality could be painted on the surface of one fluttering leaf. If ever a single one of the people around him knew what he did - could glimpse the world he'd seen - how would they react? When he told them everything they knew and loved and saw and felt was no more than foam afloat on a dark sea - that they could never see that ocean, but trust Ral when he said it was there? No. They would never listen. They would reject him. Again. He would be alone again.

Then it passed. Sound and light returned, color and scent and the immediacy of Ravnica. But he could not shake the iron chill that had settled at the core of him. The Guildpact had kept other world-walkers out of Ravnica, but the Guildpact was gone. Yet none of them had come in the intervening years. Were they all dead? Was the universe so vast that the handful of sparks capable of leaping between realities would never chance upon Ravnica, that he in turn would never cross paths with another of his kind? Would he never be able to share this experience with another?

_I must choose between all the thousand worlds and the single one that has become my home, for circumstance does not permit me both._

Was it to be the universe or Ravnica? Azor had chosen the universe. Ral only wanted the city. And yet the burn, the gulf, the endless seething brightness of existence - how could he turn his back on this infinite reality, stretching far and full of things he did not even know he did not know?

Around him the murmurs broke loose into a full-throated clamor. A shrill voice called orders. Electricity surged and the massive sphere of gel burst with light as opposing energies clashed within. The plasmoderm skin bulged and squashed as the chaos stabilized, took on a shape, took on a nature driven by that eternal conflict.

_For circumstance does not permit me both._


	12. Epilogue: Throwback

It waits.

It waits beneath a blistered sky, forged of steel and stone. It endures the scouring winds and the rains of strange substances. Draws what it needs from them, ejects what it does not. Completes itself. Waits for others to complete. Waits so very long.

And then it is somewhere else.

A creature moves and it reaches out. It longs to touch, to dig into soft meat and build. The creature has garlanded itself with metal, beautiful metal, a kind it does not know. It yearns to fuse it to flesh. After so much time waiting, all it needs is a moment of freedom. It can begin its task. It can perfect.

But every movement meets a stinging resistance. The flesh-creature winds it round with suspension-fields and isolation-bubbles, holds it away even from the air of this new place. Though it presses and pushes and strives with the ceaseless necessity of its purpose, it finds no way out. And then the poor imperfect flesh-creature seals it up in solder and wax and spells and hides it in the dark so very far away from the lovely meat.

In the back of a cabinet, a dull mizzium long-box. Written on its lid: "TOXIC AND BORING. DO NOT OPEN --RZ". The initials are written large, like a threat. Within the long-box lies a strange shard of dark metal, jagged, fractal, alien. And within that shard floats a black droplet the size of a pinhead, a tiny sphere of shimmering, glistening oil.

No matter.

It can wait.

**Author's Note:**

> Ral's song was "[Head Full of Shadows](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Esvw3fxlXXE)" by The Glitch Mob. Ravnica's song was "[The Girl](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtveSk1N7Uo)" by Hellberg (feat. Cozi Zuehlsdorff).
> 
> As you can tell, this was written before Ixalan block introduced us to the actual Azor. For the purposes of this story, he's not a sphinx, and also not as much of a dick.
> 
> The Tanish religion and culture draw heavily on Judaism, particularly Ashkenazi Judaism. I'm deeply indebted to my Jewish betas for information and stories about their own experiences growing up Jewish. Any lingering errors are my fault, not theirs. 
> 
> I've attempted to keep to Ravnica's original Eastern European flavor, though it's a big plane and there's room for analogues of any real-life culture. Both _pirozhki_ and _paczki_ are from that region. _Pirozhki_ are savory or sweet filled pastries similar to danishes. _Paczki_ are fried pastries akin to donuts.
> 
> "Tanith" (which I truncated to "Tanit") is the real-life female equivalent of the name Ba'al. "Ba'al" as a name can be applied to any god from that region and time period, but it usually means the Babylonian god of storms. Interestingly, Ba'al is the root of the name Baalshazzar, which translates to something like "Ba'al protect the king." Balshazzar is an old name that has been shortened and translated over the intervening centuries into a number of modern given names, among them..."Zarek." Not even kidding.
> 
> I've treated the Izzet League as a combination university and public utility company. There are four levels of association with the League. Going from most pragmatic to most academic, they are: workers like Ral's father who are employed by the League; regular Guild personnel like Yelena who are official Izzet members with all attendant privileges and restrictions; full-time researchers like Oliver and Professor Ducci; and full Guildmasters, who are considered experts in their fields and work on Guild-related activities directed primarily by the Firemind. Only about half of Izzet Guildmasters are Guildmages; the rest are artificers, theoreticians, mathematicians, etc.
> 
> Tanit's three faces are vaguely associated with green, white, and blue mana and the ba'al is associated with red mana.
> 
> Yes Ral's four vigils are named after DHARMA Initiative stations from Lost, yes Chapter 10 is also named after a quote from Lost, yes I'm a giant Lost nerd, no I will never get over that show, don't judge me, shut up.
> 
> Chapter 3, "The Precise Nature of the Catastrophe," is accidentally named after a Culture ship. I forgot where I'd heard that phrase before and thought it was my own, but no, it belongs to the brilliant Iain M. Banks. Chapter 8, "Spontaneous Disassembly," is named after the best euphemism yet for "our rocket may have accidentally blown up."
> 
> Chapter 4, "Born Classified," is named after a US legal doctrine covering certain types of information, mostly relating to nuclear weapons. As opposed to regular government secrets, which are classified because of their origin and dangerous because the government doesn't want them widely known, information that's "born classified" is dangerous in and of itself & automatically classified regardless of where it comes from.
> 
>  _Pensai_ is the Chinese root word for the Japanese _bonsai_.
> 
> Selesnyans are vegan, because of course they are. Silverthorn vernadi is based on a combination of the worst summer camp ever and a particularly weird co-op living group.
> 
> Ral's true magical affinity is for electromagnetism, hence his grandmother's calling it an ability that "manipulates basic principles of existence." Emmara is also an elementalist, in her case an animist. I'm working with a five-fundamental-force model for MtG universe physics, both because it matches the color pie and because magic only works if you add a fifth force capable of bridging internal thought and external reality.
> 
> The tree of forty fruit is an actual real-life thing, swear to god. It was created by an artist and bears fruit from forty separate species in the stonefruit family, which contains apples, pears, and plums.
> 
> Ral's lightning scar is an extreme case of a keraunographic marking, a bizarre injury unique to lightning strikes and other close encounters of the high voltage kind. For some reason the electrical discharge tends to produce fractal burn patterns tracking the path of the current.
> 
> Ral first planeswalked to Dominaria. The object he brought back, however, comes from exactly where you think it does. The dark substance he saw there is based on vantablack, the blackest material ever made.
> 
> I hate statistics.
> 
>  
> 
> [Link to story post on tumblr.](http://sundayswiththeilluminati.tumblr.com/post/139374774405/story-post-spark-magic-the-gathering)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Call to the Kindred](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7800370) by [Mertiya](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mertiya/pseuds/Mertiya)




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